Deep River
Karl Marlantes, 2019
Grove Atlantic Press
725 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802125385
Summary
Karl Marlantes’s debut novel Matterhorn has been hailed as a modern classic of war literature. In his new novel, Deep River, Marlantes turns to another mode of storytelling—the family epic—to craft a stunningly expansive narrative of human suffering, courage, and reinvention.
In the early 1900s, as the oppression of Russia’s imperial rule takes its toll on Finland, the three Koski siblings—Ilmari, Matti, and the politicized young Aino—are forced to flee to the United States.
Not far from the majestic Columbia River, the siblings settle among other Finns in a logging community in southern Washington, where the first harvesting of the colossal old-growth forests begets rapid development, and radical labor movements begin to catch fire.
The brothers face the excitement and danger of pioneering this frontier wilderness—climbing and felling trees one-hundred meters high—while Aino, foremost of the books many strong, independent women, devotes herself to organizing the industry’s first unions. As the Koski siblings strive to rebuild lives and families in an America in flux, they also try to hold fast to the traditions of a home they left behind.
Layered with fascinating historical detail, this is a novel that breathes deeply of the sun-dappled forest and bears witness to the stump-ridden fields the loggers, and the first waves of modernity, leave behind.
At its heart, Deep River is an ambitious and timely exploration of the place of the individual, and of the immigrant, in an America still in the process of defining its own identity. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1945
• Where—Seaside, Oregon, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.A., Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar)
• Currently—lives in Woodinville, Washington, USA
Karl Marlantes is the author of Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, a New York Times Top 10 Bestseller published in 2010. The New York Times declared Matterhorn "one of the most profound and devastating novels ever to come out of Vietnam." Matterhorn received the 2011 Washington State Book Award in the Fiction category.
The novel is based on Marlantes' experiences in the Vietnam War, where he served as a lieutenant and received various meritorious service awards from the United States Marine Corps. Marlantes first received a National Merit Scholarship to attend Yale University and was then a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. The decorations he was awarded while serving in the Marines include the Navy Cross, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts and ten Air Medals.
Marlantes was awarded the Navy Cross for an action in Vietnam in which he, as a company commander, led an assault on a North Vietnamese bunker complex on a hilltop. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Marlantes conveys the… dangerous romance of logging superbly. His descriptions of logging itself—the ingenious mechanics of taking down trees and the skill of experienced loggers—are wonderfully detailed, dramatic and exhilarating…. Mighty physical, social and economic forces operate the plot of this novel, buffeting its characters, raising them up, flinging them down, twisting their fates together. Deep River is a big American novel.
Wall Street Journal
Deep River is an engrossing and commanding historical epic about one immigrant family’s shifting fortunes…a feat of lavish storytelling.
Washington Post
As a portrait of a complicated American era, and one family’s mighty struggle against it, the novel is both fascinating and fierce. And well worth the hours it asks of its reader.
San Francisco Chronicle
Deep River is an engrossing and commanding historical epic about one immigrant family’s shifting fortunes.… [The novel is] alert to the resonances between the past and present… [and] a feat of lavish storytelling…. [But] Marlantes' big-picture storytelling can come at the expense of its line-by-line prose…. [It] could use some better sentences. But we could also use more spirited novels like Deep River.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Inspired by family history, Marlantes offers a sprawling, painstakingly realistic novel about Finnish immigrants in the Pacific Northwest during the first half of the 20th century.… Marlantes’s epic is packed with intriguing detail…, making for a vivid immigrant family chronicle.
Publishers Weekly
Following the eye-catching debut novel Matterhorn…, Marlantes shifts his attention from the Vietnam War to the early 1900s [and an immigrant family of] loggers… along Washington’s grand Columbia River…. A welcome publication, with Matterhorn published nearly a decade ago.
Library Journal
(Starred review) Marlantes poignantly depicts the intimacies of personal dramas that echo the twentieth century’s unprecedented political storms and yet in surprising ways reprise Finland’s oldest mythologies…. An unforgettable novel.
Booklist
Marlantes moves from the jungles of Vietnam to the old-growth forests of Washington in this saga of labor and love.…The story is long and has its longueurs, but Marlantes carefully builds an epic world…. A novel that sometimes struggles under its own weight but that's well worth reading.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)