Carin Pratt is one of the talented and remarkably knowledgeable crew at the Norwich Bookstore—and an ardent recommender of books. Before she landed in these parts, she spent 27 years at CBS News, including two decades as the executive producer of Face the Nation. She'll be interviewing essayist Jo Ann Beard as part of next month's Brattleboro Literary Festival.

I've been a sucker for a good logging saga since Sometimes a Great Notion (perhaps dating myself a bit there) and with Damnation Spring, I feel like I've hit the jackpot. This debut (!) novel is set in Northern California, home of the majestic (now fire-threatened) redwoods. It's a stirring saga, an environmental mystery, a knowledgeable depiction of a working class community, and the story of a complicated marriage—all in 400+ pages! So well-written...and, as one reviewer put it, the descriptions of logging work are so precise "you can smell the sawdust." Note: To some readers the book may start a little slowly. Be patient and take heart—it speeds up and then some.

You'll find Damnation Spring at your local library or independent bookseller.

And up next week: essayist, fiction writer, and Dartmouth writing prof Peter Orner.