Deep River

Having missed out on Marlantes's fiercely admired Vietnam epic, Matterhorn, and in the mood for a big Northwest tale, I decided Deep River, only his second novel in four decades of writing, would be my big book of the summer. I'm very glad I did. It is indeed a big Northwest tale, following a few decades in the lives of a dozen or so main characters and many memorable secondary players, nearly all of them Finnish immigrants to the logging camps and fishing villages near the mouth of the Columbia a century ago. Characters grow and die, succeed and fail, fall in and out of love, suffer tragedy and survive it, and get caught up in the larger dramas of their time—war, labor battles, good times and bad. But most of all, they work: for women and men, old and young, the highest praise among these stoic Finns, whether for an employee or a love match, is to be called a "good worker." I lived in their world for two weeks, and they'll live in mine—Aino and Aksel, Matti, Ilmari, and Kyllikki—for a lot longer.