The Lowering Days, Gregory Brown
The Lowering Days, Gregory Brown
1 Rating(s)
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
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The Lowering Days
A Novel

Author: Gregory Brown

Narrator: Nicole Altvater, David Aaron Baker

Unabridged: 9 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 03/02/2021


Synopsis

“In The Lowering Days Gregory Brown gives us a lush, almost mythic portrait of a very specific place and time that feels all the more universal for its singularity. There’s magic here.” —Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls and Chances AreA promising literary star makes his debut with this emotionally powerful saga, set in 1980s Maine, that explores family love, the power of myths and storytelling, survival and environmental exploitation, and the ties between cultural identity and the land we live on

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, believed the wild patch of Maine where they lived along the Penobscot River belonged to them. 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 which gives equal voice to indigenous and white issues. But the boys’ childhood reverie is shattered when a bankrupt paper mill, once the Penobscot Valley’s largest employer, is burned to the ground on the eve of potentially reopening. As the community grapples with the scope of the devastation, Falon receives a letter from a Penobscot teenager confessing to the crime—an act of justice for a sacred river under centuries of assault. For the residents of the Penobscot Valley, the fire reveals a stark truth. For many, the mill is a lifeline, providing working class jobs they need to survive. Within the Penobscot Nation, the mill is a bringer of death, spewing toxic chemicals and wastewater products that poison the river’s fish and plants. As the divide within the community widens, the building anger and resentment explodes in tragedy, wrecking the lives of David and those around him. Evocative and atmospheric, pulsating with the rhythms of the natural world, The Lowering Days is a meditation on the flow and weight of history, the power and fragility of love, the dangerous fault lines underlying families, and the enduring land where stories are created and told. 

About Gregory Brown

Gregory Brown grew up along Penobscot Bay. His stories have appeared in Tin House, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Epoch, and Narrative Magazine. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He lives in Maine with his family. The Lowering Days is his first novel. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jen on January 15, 2021

Another 5 ⭐️ book at the beginning of 2021! 🎉 This was beautiful, flowing, moving prose as the fictional David Ames tells the story of his life so far and that of those around him. It weaves in the narrative of how David grew up in Maine, on the edge of the Penobscot Reservation and mingles memories......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on April 10, 2021

I listened to “The Lowering Days” by Gregory Brown, narrated by David Aaron Baker and Nicole Altvater. I loved listening to the story, but I wonder if I would have gotten more out of it if I had read it. It’s a lyrical story, meandering, with lots of details. It’s a story that takes place in the 1980......more

Goodreads review by switterbug (Betsey) on December 11, 2020

Open any page of this book and find perilous beauty rising up and drifting down to its uncontrollable nature. You can read it as poetry, if you’re in a meditative mood, or for the landscape, the weather, the water, the sky and the day turning to night. I read it for the story and the sights and sens......more

Goodreads review by Lacepaperlife on February 24, 2021

I had heard a lot of interesting things about The Lowering Days from others with advanced reader copies. As an audiobook though, I had a hard time getting invested in the plot or characters. Although I found the story line interesting, it felt very clinical and descriptive with little emotional conn......more