ORDER FROM YOUR LOCAL INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE AT Bookshop.org
Target · Barnes & Noble · Amazon · Books-a-Million · Indiebound · Simon & Schuster
Named a best book of the year by the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, Kirkus, Amazon, and others, a New York Times best California book of the year and an Editors’ Choice, and a Washington Post notable book.
WINNER OF THE READING THE WEST AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MARK TWAIN AMERICAN VOICE IN LITERATURE AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE
“A glorious book — an assured novel that’s gorgeously told.... It’s about human nature. It’s about our relationships to our loved ones and our communities, it’s about morality and greed, it’s about our understanding of and respect for the natural world.” — John McMurtrie, New York Times Book Review
“Damnation Spring offers that rare opportunity to become part of a small community and move among its members until their hopes and fears seem as real as our own. By the end, I felt both grateful to have known these people and bereft at the prospect of leaving them behind.” — Ron Charles, Washington Post
“Probably the best novel I’ll read this year. It’s about work and love and characters who ring true. By the time I was 50 pages in, I could hardly put it down. Can’t stop thinking about it.” — Stephen King
“[an] astonishingly polished and immensely affecting debut novel...a knockout..." — Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle
"pitch-perfect...an unforgettable portrait of the very real consequences that environmental decay can hold, for nature and humanity alike." — Vogue
"If you’re jonesing for a big family saga, Ash Davidson’s debut will do the trick. Damnation Spring tackles major issues with authentic rage and grief." — LA Times
“With great empathy and care…demonstrates how competing values play out against a backdrop of climate change in America.” — The New Yorker
“[A] powerful debut.” — The Boston Globe
“An impressively well-turned story about how environmental damage creeps into our bodies, psyches, and economies.” — Kirkus Reviews★
The Barnes & Noble August 2021 Discover Pick | CBS Sunday Morning Book Report with Ron Charles | Washington Post 10 Books to Read in August | Oprah Daily Best Books of August 2021 | Featured Debut, Amazon Best of the Month | A Book of the Month Club Selection | CNN 20 New Books to Read this August | Town & Country Best Books to Read This August | Business Insider The 10 Best New Books to Read in August | Entertainment Weekly Best New Books to Read in August | Harper’s Bazaar 46 Books You Need to Read in 2021 | American Booksellers Association Indie Next List Pick | WBEZ Chicago Summer Read | Los Angeles Times 10 Best Books for Your Summer Beach Reading | Vogue Best Books to Read This Summer | BookPage 6 Debut Novelists for the Last Days of Summer | The Daily Beast Best Summer Reads of 2021 | Kirkus Reviews Hottest Summer Reads of 2021 | Off the Shelf Summer Most Anticipated: 22 New Books You’ll Want in Your Beach Bag | Lit Hub 38 Books You Need to Read This Summer | Lit Hub Most Anticipated Books of 2021 | Book Riot Most Anticipated Releases of 2021 | Library Journal Rising Stars, August 2021 | Library Journal Titles to Watch 2021
Read an excerpt on CBS Sunday Morning ›
Not a lot of guys are born to do something.
For generations, Rich Gundersen’s family has chopped a livelihood out of the redwood forest along California’s rugged coast near Damnation Grove, a swath of ancient redwoods on which Rich’s employer, Sanderson Timber Co., plans to make a killing. In 1977, with most of the forest cleared or protected, a grove like Damnation – and beyond it 24-7 Ridge, named for the diameter of its largest redwood, a tree Rich was born to harvest – is a logger’s dream.
It’s dangerous work. Rich wants better for his son, so when the opportunity arises to buy 24-7 Ridge – costing all the savings they’ve squirreled away for their growing family – he grabs it, unbeknownst to his wife, Colleen. Because the reality is their family isn’t growing; Colleen has lost several pregnancies. And she isn’t alone. As a midwife, Colleen has seen it with her own eyes. What if these miscarriages aren’t isolated strokes of bad luck?
As mudslides take out clear-cut hillsides and salmon vanish from creeks, Colleen’s search for answers threatens to unravel not just Rich’s plans for the 24-7, but their marriage too, dividing a town that lives and dies on timber.
The U.S. hardcover edition of Damnation Spring is printed on 100% recycled paper that is bleached without chlorine. Using a ton of this paper instead of virgin paper saves the equivalent of 24 trees, 1,773 gallons of water, and 3,399 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.
Ask your publisher, school, or workplace to consider using paper that is safer for communities and the environment.
Kind words from booksellers
“Damnation Spring is an exceptionally moving debut. From the rugged lyricism of its first pages to its devastating last act, Damnation Spring reads like the hard work of a storyteller writing in her prime.”
— John Francisconi, McNally Jackson (New York, NY)
“Eloquent, sometimes pain-filled, always involving, this saga of big trees and vividly imagined people is quintessentially American – at once tragic and shot with love for one another and for the land they inhabit, however flawed their ability to understand it.”
— Betsy Burton, The King’s English (Salt Lake City, UT)
"Damnation Spring emotionally gutted me… Author Ash Davidson has woven together so many story threads: chemical toxins, clear cutting, corporate greed, grief, loss and love; and she does so while dragging the readers along by their heart."
— Mary O’Malley, Skylark Bookshop (Columbia, Missouri)
“Rarely do we remember the fortunes made from logging California's remarkable coastal redwoods. Generations of families made their living in the forests of Northern California. ... A respect for the giant trees that make the California coast so beloved and recognizable suffuses this quiet, powerful, emotional novel.”
— Elayna Trucker, Napa Bookmine (Napa, CA)
“[Davidson] invests the Gundersens, Rich, Colleen, and their young son Chub, with a strength and courage to endure that matches the ancient redwoods that tower over their majestic surroundings. This is a vitally important American novel and the complex issues it explores still resonate ominously in today's world.”
— Alden Graves, Northshire Bookstore (Manchester Center, VT)
“Ash Davidson has written a novel that transcends place and time and envisions the challenges and triumphs we are all experiencing in a changing America.”
— Sarah Bagby, Watermark Books (Wichita, KS)
“This novel reminds me of The Overstory by Richard Powers, but told from the perspective of the loggers and their families…once you’re in the story it’s just not possible to stop reading the over 400 pages until the forest fades into Rich’s eyes. It’s a beautiful book, and I hope you love it as much as I did.”
— Todd Miller, Arcadia Books (Spring Green, WI)
“Damnation Spring is an astonishingly accomplished debut…The slow-burning plot allows ample time to know these people, their spider web of relationships, and the difficult issues they face. This is a book to savor; to experience the pleasure of lingering on the subtle flavorings of its language; to live with these people for a spell.”
— Lee Miller, Belmont Books (Belmont, MA)
“Ash Davidson's large-hearted Damnation Spring is a searching account of community under what are really fleeting circumstances — how long, beyond a few generations — can a place devoted to cutting its trees down sustain itself — with all manner of forces at work. Money, greed, altruism, risk, power, fear and aspiration, love, betrayal, time, fate, and work itself - within a marriage, between generations, and amongst family and community are all artfully drawn. As much as the human drama is centered, there is no denying the power and primacy of the setting. One viscerally feels dwarfed by the towering trees, gaps where there is light, the fleeting sights of open ocean. And the coastal damp. You can feel it, you can smell it, reading this beautifully written book. What a book, debut and all."
— Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company (Seattle, WA)
“Damnation Spring is a brilliant novel. Ash Davidson brings dignity to her rural community whose way of life is disappearing in front of them… I can't get this book out of my head and I don't want to.”
— Gayle Shanks, Changing Hands (Phoenix, AZ)
“This portrait of a logging community reminds us in the most intimate of ways how much is lost when we turn on the natural world. The stories of Rich, Colleen and Chub are unforgettable and it’s hard to believe that this is a first novel. Damnation Spring stands right alongside Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion and Karl Marlantes’ Deep River.”
— Mitchell Kaplan, Books & Books (Miami, FL)
“Damnation Spring is a must-read for fans of Overstory… [The novel] thrust me into the shoes of loggers, and I stepped out of those shoes with a big dose of empathy injected into my environmentalism. Davidson has written a gritty, humbling, remarkable first book.”
— Kay Wosewick, Boswell Books (Milwaukee, WI)
“I just finished Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson. I loved it and the PNW setting. The descriptions of the redwoods, the rain dripping off the evergreen branches, the muddy roads...all so true. What a great novel does is keep you thinking about it, and Damnation Spring is certainly one of those.”
— Annie Philbrick, Bank Square Books (Mystic, CT)
“Ash Davidson has crafted a work of devastating beauty. ... Told with empathy and compassion, Damnation Spring makes the story of one family a universal call for action…This is a profound, influential, and necessary novel that should be on any serious reader's bookshelf for 2021.”
— Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books (Excelsior, MN)
“As we learn more in the 21st century about the devastation of our forests in the 20th century, Damnation Spring brings it together in an epic about nature and family. Highly recommended reading.”
— Valerie Koehler, Blue Willow Bookshop (Houston, TX)
“You will quickly become invested in this small community, the personal lives and the struggles. You will learn a bit along the way and may think more about where your drinking water originates. I think this well-crafted novel will appeal to both women and men. I also think it will interest younger readers who are motivated by Greta Thunberg’s movement.”
— Fran Ziegler, Titcomb's Books (East Sandwich, MA)
“In this beautifully crafted story, Davidson addresses the timely question of how we balance the health of our planet with the daily struggles of the working man and woman…Damnation Spring is sure to be at the top of every book club's list!”
— Bill Reilly, River’s End Bookstore (Oswego, NY)
“This is the book you will lose your weekend to and then recommend to everyone you know. Damnation Spring is about logging redwoods, families in conflict, a community in crisis, the environment, public health, the local economy, and the fine line between right and wrong. An astonishing debut.”
— Stan Hynds, Northshire Bookstore (Manchester Center, VT)
“Damnation Spring is an exquisitely told, American novel about trees, family, business, the environment and survival…This is a special book I will be thinking about and recommending for a very long time.”
— Linda McLoughlin Figel, {Pages} A Bookstore (Manhattan Beach, CA)
Kind words from writers
“A sweeping family saga of love and grief and the deeply personal tragedies that occur when our planet is abused. This is the kind of novel I’ve been craving for ages. Ambitious in its scope, masterful in its execution. This stunning story, written in pitch-perfect prose, announces Ash Davidson as a major new voice in American Literature. Every page stirred my soul.”
— Emily Ruskovich, author of Idaho
“In her astonishingly accomplished first novel, Ash Davidson reminds us that we are never more profoundly shaped by our environment than when we destroy it. Nearly every page left me in awe.”
— Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
“With its lavishly evoked, fog-bound rainforest, its sawtooth humor, shifting narrative perspectives, and testosterone-fueled battles against nature, Damnation Spring inevitably recalls Ken Kesey's Sometimes A Great Notion. But Ash Davidson treads boldly beyond Kesey's narrow vision to the profit motives that exploit a brutal machismo culture, bereft of health or humanity. Most poignantly, she gives voice to the women whose lives and unborn children succumb to chemical and timber company bottom lines. Her scenes of childbirth, grief, and helpless rage mirror in heartbreaking detail the reality of families in the poisoned, strip-mined clearcuts of the Pacific Northwest today.”
— Carol Van Strum, author of A Bitter Fog
“Damnation Spring dignifies the working-class experience with complicated characters whose hopes and heartbreaks at once transcend and are defined by their relationship to labor. Davidson evokes a story so vivid that readers will smell the trees, feel the damp, and – most importantly – care about a family.”
— Sarah Smarsh, author of Heartland
“Damnation Spring is that wonderful evocation of a world so complete you can’t believe it’s fiction, each character and moment drawn with precision and heart. Davidson crafts a portrait of a marriage inside a portrait of a town inside a portrait of an industry, refracting the consequences of capitalism through people’s lives and bodies. A masterful and sensitive explication of how humans are part of their environment no less than trees, mud, other animals, and water, this novel takes place forty years ago but could not be more relevant. If you want to know how we came to find ourselves amid an extinction event, or you need a gripping escape from considering the same, read this book.”
— Merritt Tierce, author of Love Me Back
"So absorbing is Damnation Spring, so rich with the atmosphere of a time and a place, that when I laid the book down it was hard not to look around my living room and wonder where the redwoods had gone. What impresses me the most about Ash Davidson and her writing is how deeply she understands her characters, and how sharply she has observed their world, yet how little fuss she makes about it. There's not an ounce of ego on display here, which means that it's never the singer you hear, always the song. And the song, in this case, is magnificent.”
— Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations and The Brief History of the Dead
“Damnation Spring is, like the redwood trees at the center of its story, a beautiful, timeless, and breathtaking novel. It is painstakingly researched and lovingly crafted. But most importantly, the author is incredibly sensitive and tender with her characters, who, for the reader, quickly become as close as neighbors or family. Ultimately, time is the best judge of artistic quality, but for me, this book has all the makings of a classic. It is, in my estimation, a Great American Novel. A novel that tips its cap at writers like Steinbeck and Kesey, but also confidently forges ahead, blazing new paths. Just – a stunning, wondrous book.”
— Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Little Faith
“Unavoidable, maybe, but Damnation Spring recalls Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion, a big, rollicking crowd pleaser of a family saga set in hardscrabble logging country. Ash Davidson’s homespun characters aren’t just local color. Like their community, they face a reckoning as their lives and livelihoods collide with the wider world.”
— Stewart O’Nan, author of A World Away and Songs for the Missing
“Ash Davidson writes with unwavering compassion – for bitterly divided families, for those with fatally opposed ideologies, for our fragile natural world. Such is the rare generosity of spirit that has produced Damnation Spring – an elegant novel of profound power and grace.”
— Madhuri Vijay, author of The Far Field
“Nowhere else on earth do the trees reach so high as the ancient groves of redwoods that tower over the fog-laced coast of the Pacific Northwest. And in few other settings can a writer erect an overstory so vast, so intricate, so tightly woven that when its readers lean back and gaze into its branches, they are somehow made to feel both diminished and expanded in the very same breath. Like the canopy of an enchanted forest, Damnation Spring is draped in a tapestry of shadows dappled with sunlight, mystery pierced through by beams of revelation, and a harrowing natural beauty capable of drawing forth gorgeous, gracefully wrought prose that is soaring, magnificent, and drenched in birdsong.”
— Kevin Fedarko, author of The Emerald Mile
Buy Damnation Spring
You can order at your local independent bookstore through Bookshop.org, or through the retailer of your choice. Independent booksellers are some of the best book-loving people on Earth. Please support them if you can. Thank you.
If you’d like a signed, personalized copy, my local Bright Side Bookshop can help. Please include a note in the “order comments” that you’d like the book signed.