A 2021 Most Anticipated Book From Publishers Marketplace, Goodreads, Library Journal, and LitHub
Left Bank Books / Bridgton Books / PRINT: A Bookstore / The Briar Patch / Gulf of Maine Books / Brookline Booksmith / The Odyssey Bookshop / Harriett's Bookshop / Prairie Lights / Tattered Cover Book Store / Warwick's / Book Passage / Powell’s / Bookshop / Indiebound / Books-A-Million / Barnes & Noble / Apple Books / Amazon / Libro.fm (audiobook)
If you paid attention, you could see the entire unfolding of human history in a story . . .
Growing up, David Almerin Ames and his brothers, Link and Simon, thought of the wild patch of Maine where they lived along the Penobscot River as theirs. Running down the state like a spine, the river shared its name with the people of the Penobscot Nation, whose ancestral territory included the entire Penobscot watershed, the land upon which the Ames family eventually made their home.
The brothers’ affinity for the natural world derives from their iconoclastic parents, Arnoux, a romantic artist and Vietnam War deserter who builds boats by hand, and Falon, an activist journalist who runs The Lowering Days, a community newspaper that gives equal voice to indigenous and white issues.
But the boys’ childhood dreamscape is shattered when a Penobscot teenager sets fire to a shuttered area paper mill on the eve of its possible reopening in an act of defiance seeking to protect the land from further harm. The fire reveals a stark truth for the residents of the Penobscot Valley. For many, the mill is a lifeline, providing working class jobs they need to survive. Within the Penobscot Nation, the mill brings only heartache, spewing toxic chemicals and wastewater products that poison the river’s fish and plants.
Call it criminal mischief or environmental justice, the fire sets loose a series of long-simmering grievances, ending in a cycle of violence that tears apart the community and two families and changes the trajectory of David's life.
Evocative, atmospheric, and pulsating with the rhythms of the natural world, The Lowering Days is a meditation on the flow and weight of history, an exploration of the power and fragility of love, an examination of the dangerous fault lines underlying families, and an offering to an enduring land where stories are created and told.
The brothers’ affinity for the natural world derives from their iconoclastic parents, Arnoux, a romantic artist and Vietnam War deserter who builds boats by hand, and Falon, an activist journalist who runs The Lowering Days, a community newspaper that gives equal voice to indigenous and white issues.
But the boys’ childhood dreamscape is shattered when a Penobscot teenager sets fire to a shuttered area paper mill on the eve of its possible reopening in an act of defiance seeking to protect the land from further harm. The fire reveals a stark truth for the residents of the Penobscot Valley. For many, the mill is a lifeline, providing working class jobs they need to survive. Within the Penobscot Nation, the mill brings only heartache, spewing toxic chemicals and wastewater products that poison the river’s fish and plants.
Call it criminal mischief or environmental justice, the fire sets loose a series of long-simmering grievances, ending in a cycle of violence that tears apart the community and two families and changes the trajectory of David's life.
Evocative, atmospheric, and pulsating with the rhythms of the natural world, The Lowering Days is a meditation on the flow and weight of history, an exploration of the power and fragility of love, an examination of the dangerous fault lines underlying families, and an offering to an enduring land where stories are created and told.
