Aug 27, 2021
Ash Davidson talks to Carol Fitzgerald about her very accomplished debut novel, Damnation Spring, which is a Bookreporter Bets On selection. It’s a book where the characters and their story will stay with you.
Damnation Spring is set in a northern California town in the late ‘70s. Damnation Spring tells the very human story of a family torn apart by the underlying effects of environmental destruction. Rich and his family have been longtime loggers in this area, and he sees an opportunity for a fortune to be made by buying a track of forest to harvest. He keeps this purchase quiet, not even sharing it with his wife, Colleen. She recently lost a child, a still birth after a number of miscarriages, and as a midwife in the area she is also seeing miscarriages across the community. A longtime friend of Colleen’s comes to the area and points out that the herbicides the logging company uses are infiltrating their water supply, and may be causing issues with not only wildlife, but people as well.
Ash talks to Carol the decade she spent writing the book, and how the story changed over time. They discuss the development of the characters, and how their stories were very much a reality for people living in that part of the country. There is a lot here for a book group discussion.
Book Discussed in this Episode:
Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson
https://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/damnation-spring/about
More Bookreporter Talks To:
The Last Mona Lisa: https://youtu.be/BBKKvV9moW8
The Paper Palace: https://youtu.be/jYhiuOz7X3Q
Lightning Strike: https://youtu.be/Ylo8rzowHzM
Check out our Bookaccino Book Club live events!
Julie Clark: https://youtu.be/8AjJHRttMpU
William Kent Krueger: https://youtu.be/dX-mHWLmv5k
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Photography Credit: Greg Fitzgerald