Damnation Spring, by Ash Davidson: A Truly Great American Novel

It's been a long time since I read anything as good as Ash Davidson's novel, Damnation Spring. This book wrecked me in ways I can't quite yet begin to understand. It is a quintessential American story, and a truly great American novel. It's my favorite book of 2021, and it's hard to imagine I'll read anything that'll affect me as much as this book did.

So Damnation Spring is set in a small logging town in northern California in 1977. It's the story of the Gundersen family: Rich, a 4th generation logger, his wife Colleen, and their young son, Chub. Life is not easy. Logging, already dangerous, is now a dying industry, as environmentalists and conservationists ("tree huggers" and hippies) are becoming increasingly fierce in their objections to destroying the redwoods. But, for a logger, what's the point of saving a tree? A tree exists to be cut down. A tree is just timber waiting to be turned into profit, say the logging company capitalists. Nature exists only to benefit humanity. 

But even more deeply, the conflict in this novel is about no less than survival: It's between those trying to "save the world," and those trying to save themselves. If Rich can't log anymore, how are he and the rest of the guys he works with supposed to make a living? Saving the trees will kill their community. Logging is all they know — it's the only way this small town can survive. 

So to save himself and his family, Rich takes one last shot: When a parcel of land near his home comes up for sale, he takes out a huge loan to buy it (without telling Colleen). His plan is to log it, quickly turn that timber into dollars, and then retire. The company he works for is logging an adjacent parcel, and will already be building the roads to allow him to get his timber out. So it's a perfect plan, assuming all goes well.

As you'd imagine, as is the case in good fiction, nothing goes well.

But the loggers vs. the tree huggers isn't the only environmental story here. Both the logging company as well as the government use a herbicide spray to keep down the weeds and make logging easier. Not coincidentally, the town suffers a rash of birth defects, miscarriages, and mysterious dead animals. The logging company tries to convince the town the herbicides are safe, as business always does. But most people, Colleen included, know that their drinking water is being polluted, and their health is being compromised. What will it take to convince others, including her own husband, that this is true? 

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was published in 1962, warning of the dangers of unchecked use of chemical pesticides. When I read that book a few years ago, I was sort of shocked by how little we've learned since then. This novel certainly makes that point starkly, as well — about how chemicals have horrific unintended consequences. When we try to engineer nature for short-term benefit, the long-term detriments are devastating. 

There has been an influx lately of really good environmental novels. This takes its place at the head of the class — it's a combination of two other books I loved, The Overstory, by Richard Powers and Deep River, by Karl Marlantes. But this novel is even better than the sum of those two parts. 

I loved the environmental message in this novel, but I equally loved these characters and their story — especially how Davidson renders moments of tenderness between them in what is a cruel and tough world. I rooted for all of them, even though it's hard to know who to root for in a novel about competing interests, when everyone's claim seems legit, even when it pits wife against husband.

What's more, this novel is just so immersive. I haven't FELT like I was in a novel — the rainy, dreary forest, the stink and suck of the mud, the comfort beside the fire — like I did in this one. There were times, as I read this on hot summer days, I'd look up and be surprised there wasn't snow on the ground and I wasn't surrounded by redwoods. 

If it's possible for a first novel (yes, miraculously, this is a debut!) to be a masterpiece, this is it. This a book, like all the best books do, that will stay with me for a long time. I cannot recommend a novel more highly. 

Godspeed, by Nickolas Butler: Uncommon Affection for Character

At first blush, the plot of Nickolas Butler's new novel Godspeed may not sound like the stuff literary dreams are made of: Three dudes are hired by a rich lady to build a house on an impossibly tight deadline in the mountains of Wyoming. But in the hands of a storyteller as high caliber as Butler, it works!  

One reason it works is that there is a fair amount of mystery here: Why the tight deadline? Why that remote location? What's the deal with the woman Gretchen who hires them? Will they finish in time?

Secondly, these characters, as is often the case in Butler novels, are vastly underrepresented in fiction. So they're fascinating. Name another novel about construction workers. I'll wait. Sure, it's a risky choice. But because Butler is so good at writing characters, we're happily along for this ride to find out how it turns out for these fellas.

If you’re a Butler fan — and I’m huge one — you’ll immediately notice Godspeed is his first novel not set in Wisconsin. It's also his first novel that, if you're into genre-ing things, could be considered a mystery or a thriller.

Still, Godspeed is easily identifiable as a Butler novel for two reasons. First, even though his characters here are deeply flawed, he still displays an uncommon affection for them. That's a quality you don't find in too many writers, and it's one of the main reasons I love his books, this one included. Secondly, there's a tension here between the haves (Gretchen, and the rich tourists of Jackson Hole) and the have-nots (these three dudes). The three buddies who moved out to Wyoming from Utah and started a construction business recognize the risk of undertaking this project, sure. But they also see it as their golden ticket: Just a few months of hell and all our dreams can come true...assuming nothing goes wrong. And again, because we don't see these guys on the page too often, we're not really sure what exactly they're going to do. And that builds a massive amount of narrative tension and intrigue. 

But of course things go wrong. The question becomes, what are these guys really willing to do, what will they compromise, and will their friendship survive? Another Butler knack is for rendering male friendships — and he nails it again here with these three guys. The highs, the lows, the loyalty, the dick jokes.

If I still haven't convinced you to give this a try, hey, how about that cover art?! Pretty, pretty good. So but if you're a fan of the underdog, if you like seeing salt-of-the-earth people represented in fiction, and if you enjoy top-tier storytelling, this is a perfect novel for you. 

Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby: Gritty, Grimy, Glorious

Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby, is a gritty, grimy, glorious crime novel, with a side of social commentary, and with a pretty inventive premise: Two ex cons, one Black, one White, team up to avenge the murder of their sons...who happened to be married to each other. The sons were both estranged from their fathers because their dads were less-than-accepting of them being gay. 

So this starts out as a buddy drama, but decidedly without the buddy. These two guys, Ike and Buddy Lee, have to overcome their aversion to each other before they can make any meaningful progress in finding out who killed their sons. Buddy Lee is your typical Southern Virginia hard-drinking, trailer-living, good 'ole boy — a smart ass with some less than modern views on race relations. Ike has turned his life around after a long stint in prison, started a landscaping company, and is now living the straight and narrow...if nearly completely humorless.

The only thing these two tough guys really have in common, other than each doing jail time, is that neither of their sons much liked them. But they agree to team up to honor their memory as they start to realize that maybe them not accepting their sons as they were may have contributed to their deaths. 

As they get into their own investigation, they run afoul of a murderous motorcycle gang with pretty obvious connections to the murder. The cat and mouse game begins, and the key becomes a missing woman named Tangerine who holds not just the answer to who killed their sons, but also has a secret that could destroy many other lives.

This has everything you want in a crime novel: Breakneck pace, over-the-top violence, wise cracking ex-cons with hearts of golds, some obvious plot holes and convenient coincidences (what crime novel doesn't?!), a motorcycle gang, and so much more. I loved it. I don't dip into crime fiction too frequently, but this one landed just right.

Crying In H Mart, by Michelle Zauner: A Sad, Sweet, Hip Memoir of Food, Identity, and Music

Memoirs are still all the rage these days, especially sad ones. And this one — Crying In H Mart, by Michelle Zauner — is especially sad. But it's also sweet and a little funny and pretty hip too. You may know Zauner as the frontwoman and songwriter behind the indie shoegaze band Japanese Breakfast. (If you don't, that's okay — I hadn't heard of her either, but I listened to a lot of Japanese Breakfast while reading this, and I love her!) 

This memoir is about Zauner's mother's sickness and death from cancer. But a major through-line is her connection to her Korean identity — her mother is Korean, her father American. (Here's a Daily Show interview that explains how she came up with Japanese Breakfast, despite being Korean.) Being half Korean was a liability in her mind as she grew up as a bit of a wild child in Eugene, Oregon, but a part of her she wishes she'd embraced more after her mother's death, especially given that her relationship with her mother wasn't always perfect.

Another thing I learned from this book right off the bat is that H Mart is a Korean grocery store. Food is one way Zauner learns to embrace her Korean heritage and remind herself of her mother. She writes about all the Korean food she loved growing up and begins learning to make her mother's dishes. This helps her appreciate food the way her mother did, and by extension, her identity. 

Zauner is a tremendously gifted, extremely self-aware writer. Of course, it was fascinating to read about her evolution as a writer, artist, and musician. But her relationship with her mother and her evolving notion of her own identity are on center stage here — and these are what make this a really great read.

Letting Go, by Philip Roth: A First Novel That'd Never Be Published Today

Shout out to the four people (and four may be overstating it) who will care about this review of a 630-page novel first published in 1962! 😂

I've read more Philip Roth than any other writer. So it was about time to read Letting Go, his first full-length novel (published in 1962, after his first actual published work, Goodbye, Columbus, a story collection and novella, published in 1959). All I could think all the way through these 630 pages is that, while I was mostly enjoying it, it sure didn't feel like a Philip Roth novel. Here, Roth characters spend a lot of time actually talking to each other (mostly arguing), and they do very little individual introspection. Odd, for Roth.

This story is basically about two couples living in mid-century Chicago. Narrators and perspectives shift to reveal each characters' skeletons in the closet, and why their current relationships are fraught. But what makes this a memorable, fascinating story is that all four of these characters are absolutely neurotic and medium-terrible people. They are unforgettable, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about all their problems with each other.

So if you think of this as a first novel, and not Philip Roth's first novel, it's an amazingly accomplished feat. It's a first novel that would NEVER get published today — or would at least be edited down to about 250 pages. Even though this novel deals with semi-dramatic issues, like disowned families, adoption, abortion, infidelity, and more, not a whole lot really happens. How Roth manages to keep you coming back for 630 pages is pretty amazing. So even though this is generally considered a minor Roth work, even though it's his debut novel, you still do get a sense of the talent that is about to unleash some of the best American literature to come over the next 50 years. And that's why I read it. It took almost a month, but I'm glad I did.