Please join us for a book talk and reading with author Lale Davidson, as she shares her new novel, Against the Grain.
Two-thousand-year-old redwoods once cloaked the northern California coast like bear fur, mesmerizing in their enormity. As a boy, Logan Blackburn spent many nights on a platform twenty stories off the ground in his favorite giant, Uuma, lulled to sleep by the strange murmuring and thrumming of the ancient redwood. As an adult, he joins his father and other activists to fight Pacific Lumber and save the three percent of that remains. When Logan's father dies in the attempt, the spell is broken. Logan can no longer hear the trees.
To make matters worse, billionaire Atlas Jamison, who staged a hostile takeover of Pacific Lumber, is tripling the tree felling rate. The largest and most ancient ones are being reduced to lawn furniture with heart-stopping speed. Activists resort to ever more desperate measures to save both trees and planet, but Jamison seems unstoppable until his daughter Diana shows up, wanting to protect him from what she thinks is an unfair smear campaign. Can Logan overcome his grief and rage to show this privileged and savvy woman how to hear the voices of the trees-and stop her father's destruction? Is there more to Atlas Jamison than meets the eye?
Based on the true story of violent clashes in Northern California between corporate raiders, loggers, and activists during Redwood Summer 1990, Against the Grain is action-packed, transcendent, and timely. It asks, what will it take to wake humans up? Violence, love, or loss?
Lâle Davidson is the author of two novels, Against the Grain and Blue Woman Burning. Her collection of short stories Strange Appetites won the Adirondack Center for Writing’s People’s Choice Award for 2016. Her stories have appeared in The North American Review, Eclectica, and Gone Lawn among others. She was a finalist for the Franz Kafka Award issued by Doctor T.J. Eckleburgh Review as well as the Black Lawrence Chapbook Contest of 2015 and The Talking Writing Award for humorous writing advice. Her story “The Opal Maker” was named top fifty of 2015 very short fiction publications by Wigleaf. She is a Distinguished Professor who has taught writing for 27 years at a community college where she recently received the Chancellor’s Award for Scholarship and Creative Activities (2018).
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"Against the Grain combines gorgeous poetry and romance with heart-stopping action, as the daughter of a rich CEO joins forces with a logger's son to stop a huge lumber company from destroying an ancient redwood forest. The trees themselves become surprisingly powerful characters in this rich, multilayered novel.
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