Books like Damnation Spring — picked by fans

I loved being transported through time and space on a journey to learn about redwoods, the tallest trees on Earth. This is one of those great books where the illustrations show what is being described in the text, but in a way that makes the reader feel immersed—Roman soldiers riding the subway?

I liked learning about how redwoods start their lives and how they survive in their environment, including when fires strike. I love how the book includes the dangerous work of scientists studying redwoods and amazing scientific facts about how redwoods create their own rain and host other plants and animals that live high up in the redwood canopy. 

I originally intended to write a chapter in my book about how the birth of San Francisco (and other imperial cities) sent out a shock wave of deforestation, but I only touched lightly upon it in my chapter on mining.

Greg King has filled that need in his magisterial book about how ruthlessly and quickly the city’s magnates converted one of the Earth’s most magnificent forests and remarkable ecosystems into stumps as well as cash, credit, and dynastic fortunes on the city’s markets so that today only four percent of California’s old-growth redwoods remain.

Depressing as his narrative might otherwise be, King also reveals how the epic fight to save what remains has—like the campaign to stop whaling—changed popular perceptions of our living colleagues so that what once seemed a heroic enterprise now appears to many an epic crime. 

Each of us who has felt the awe of being in a redwood forest will identify with the kids in this book.

Julian is less than happy about having to spend the summer with his Uncle Sibley, CEO of a big company, while his mother is doing research in China. Though he knew it is wrong, he reads his uncle's email and discovers that the company is about to cut down first-growth California redwoods. Irate about both his situation and the prospect of losing the redwoods, he and friends devise a convoluted plan to solve both. 

This story shows the persistence and resolve of the kids in their concern for the environment.

This book is so beautiful you could just admire it for the illustrations. It is written in rhyme which flows well with the images. All about the California Redwoods, it educates children about the animal creatures that call this place home. It pulls in educational components such as counting and also offers some STEAM activities. Great for teachers and parents. 

I love this book because it teaches plant science. How do the trees actually grow so high? 

There aren’t a lot of picture books that include how photosynthesis works or how water is transported within a tree’s trunk. This book explains the plant physiology behind tree growth. Trees are, after all, the tallest things on Earth, but I have found that few books explain how they get to be so tall. We sort of take it for granted that tall things were always tall, didn’t we?

This book compares some of the world’s tallest animals and landmarks to the tallest tree species in the world: the coast redwood, giant sequoia, and Sitka spruce. While this text repeats some of the same information as Redwoods by Jason Chin, this book has more explanation on the biology of plant growth. 

In this moving novel, the late great Oakley Hall took me back to World War II era San Diego. What I love about it is it paints a much fuller portrait of the lost city of old than he does in his first San Diego-based novel.

This book is filled with wonder, dread, love, and longing but what makes it noteworthy is its keen eye toward history and the darkness at the heart of the city’s streets and neighborhoods—and at the center of the war itself. 

Possibly the best and rarest of all publications about the start of the women’s music movement, this volume was prepared by the students at the University of California at Santa Cruz to serve as a textbook (and record of their experiences) for the first-ever course on feminism and music. Still available to good sleuths who find used copies floating around, the title page is Women in American Music. Women’s Studies, Kresge College, University of California, Santa Cruz, Spring 1975.

The idea for the class was initiated by Karlene Faith, who went on to be an influential producer and distributor; the book she helped edit includes interviews with early Olivia artists who were guest speakers and performers in the class. Before her untimely death, she too was working on a history of Olivia Records.

This book is an enthralling field trip through my home state. McPhee--in company with a larger-than-life California geologist--takes apart and puts together the wildly varying regions of the state. He roams the coast, the mountains, the valleys, the rivers, the cities, and even puts the reader into the cataclysm of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. What more could a reader want? Well, staggeringly good writing and lively wit. Done.

“It is said that if a cow lies down in California, a seismologist will know it.” John McPhee.

I read The Brick People when it was first published in 1988.

At the time, I was already familiar with Morales’ work, but this historical novel about the Simons Brick Factory in Southern California and the Mexican migrants who the Simons brother depended upon for their success seized my imagination.

The author blends folklore, history, myth, and magical realism into a novel that relates the story of Mexican migrants and their complicity with or rebellion against the Simons brothers and the mores of the early 20th Century Los Angeles region.

Morales shows how history from the ground up is manifested in people’s lives.  His characters work and play hard as they seek to build community and pursue dreams of social mobility even when customs and laws prohibit them.

This was a hard pick because I could easily have chosen any of Joanne Bischof’s other books.

She writes with such excellence and depth of feeling that you bond with the characters and go through their trials alongside them. I chose The Gold in These Hills over her other equally loved books because I read it with tears streaming down my face. The theme of restoration after loss and betrayal resonated with me. Deep despair gives way to soul-stretching hope.

Beautiful, quotable prose stuck with me long after I finished. If you want a novel about second chances that speaks deeply to the heart, give this one a try.