The Lowering Days: A Novel

by Gregory Brown Narrated by Nicole Altvater, David Aaron Baker

Overview

“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 Are

A 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.*

Editorial Reviews

JUNE 2021 - AudioFile

Brown’s debut novel, set in Maine’s Penobscot Valley in the 1980s, is performed with a compelling, confident delivery. Narrator David Aaron Baker is the voice of David Almerin Ames, who recalls a community divided when a Penobscot teen set fire to the paper mill on the eve of its reopening, destroying the town’s livelihood. Penobscot elder Moses’s sonorous, wisdom-filled voice supports and defends the powerless. The anger of Almerin’s father, Arnoux, reacting to threats to his family, and the surprise in family friend/rival Liam’s voice when he faces the consequences of his actions are visceral, keeping the listener engaged. Narrator Nicole Alvater gives a realistic voice to Molly, the girl who lit the fuse. Altvater contributes significantly with her portrayal, including her smooth delivery of Penobscot words. N.E.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

01/04/2021

Brown’s dynamic debut shines a light on a small town’s fraught history in Maine’s Penobscot River valley. The story is narrated by David Ames, a doctor reflecting on his childhood in the 1980s and ’90s, beginning with his journalist mother, Falon’s establishment of a local newspaper called The Lowering Days during his infancy. As the paper’s first articles go to press, the Indigenous Penobscot people are working to reclaim land they allege was illegitimately sold out from under them in the 19th century. A paper mill now sits on the land—and in the crosshairs of a national clean water movement. After a fire destroys the mill, Falon publishes a letter by a teen eco-activist who claims to have set the fire, and controversy erupts. The white townspeople become increasingly divided on the issues of pollution and land reparations, as rumors and long-held prejudices build to various feuds, particularly between Falon and a troublemaking lobsterman Lyman Creel, whose family owned the mill. The feud with Creel leads to a tragedy that forces David and his family to regroup. Brown poetically depicts the bucolic backdrop and grounds the action amid forested hillsides “deep and green and smoky with the scent of pine.” Lyrical and gorgeously written, Brown’s memorable outing does justice to a complicated web of issues. Agent: Jonah Straus, Jonah Straus Literary. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

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 Are

“The Lowering Days is expansive in its scope and intimate in its details, a lyrical and sincere work by a novelist fully alive to the natural world." — Anthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

"The Lowering Days is a masterful debut, a tender and elegant meditation on the thorny bonds of family and community, the enduring trauma of environmental degradations, and the salvific power of stories. At once lyrical and spare, graceful and steely-eyed, Mr. Brown’s prose conjures the work of Louise Erdrich and Jim Harrison. Every word is a gift and a revelation, and a call for reckoning."
— Elizabeth Wetmore, author of Valentine

"Unflinching, lyrical, and timely, The Lowering Days marks the emergence of a new and authentic voice in American letters.  Brown is bona fide, a writer with incredible storytelling chops yes, but also a poet's soul, and a balladeer's heart." — Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Little Faith

“An intimate novel about a close-knit community at the mercy of two of the world’s most implacable forces—history and nature. Gregory Brown renders the lives and landscapes of rural Maine with great power and greater compassion.” — Madhuri Vijay, author of The Far Field

“Brown stages a natural comparison: Why does each character resort to violence? Are their actions justified? How are they treated in the aftermath? The disparity quickly becomes clear: Molly must go into hiding and live off the land, while David and his family can return home safely each night.” — New York Times

"Graceful and compassionate . . . The Lowering Days [is] a flashlight into the heart of a small Maine community perched on the precipice of the Penobscot River, its future and its past." — Boston Globe

"Brown writes a fluid, lyrical prose that escorts us deep into the emotional lives of his characters." — Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Brown tells a gripping tale. And in his hands the Penobscot region of the 1980s and '90s—with its eccentric cast of Vietnam veterans, hippy fugitives, gruff lobstermen, and Penobscot tribal members—comes wonderfully to life." — Kirkus Reviews

"Lyrical and gorgeously written, Brown’s memorable outing does justice to a complicated web of issues." — Publishers Weekly

Madhuri Vijay

An intimate novel about a close-knit community at the mercy of two of the world’s most implacable forces—history and nature. Gregory Brown renders the lives and landscapes of rural Maine with great power and greater compassion.

Elizabeth Wetmore

"The Lowering Days is a masterful debut, a tender and elegant meditation on the thorny bonds of family and community, the enduring trauma of environmental degradations, and the salvific power of stories. At once lyrical and spare, graceful and steely-eyed, Mr. Brown’s prose conjures the work of Louise Erdrich and Jim Harrison. Every word is a gift and a revelation, and a call for reckoning."

New York Times

Brown stages a natural comparison: Why does each character resort to violence? Are their actions justified? How are they treated in the aftermath? The disparity quickly becomes clear: Molly must go into hiding and live off the land, while David and his family can return home safely each night.

Richard Russo

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.

Boston Globe

"Graceful and compassionate . . . The Lowering Days [is] a flashlight into the heart of a small Maine community perched on the precipice of the Penobscot River, its future and its past."

Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Brown writes a fluid, lyrical prose that escorts us deep into the emotional lives of his characters."

Anthony Marra

The Lowering Days is expansive in its scope and intimate in its details, a lyrical and sincere work by a novelist fully alive to the natural world."

Nickolas Butler

"Unflinching, lyrical, and timely, The Lowering Days marks the emergence of a new and authentic voice in American letters.  Brown is bona fide, a writer with incredible storytelling chops yes, but also a poet's soul, and a balladeer's heart."

Library Journal

10/01/2020

From Iowa Writers' Workshop grad Brown, The Lowering Days tracks what happens when an about-to-reopen paper mill collapses in flames; for many working-class people in Maine's Penobscot Valley, the mill would have been an essential source of jobs, but for the Penobscot people, it's a source of pollution wrecking ancestral lands (50,000-copy first printing). With TV rights just sold to Heyday Films after a fierce auction, Day's In the Quick features the newly designated engineer on a space station, who believes that a spacecraft launched years ago and powered by her late uncle's supposedly failed fuel cells is still out there somewhere. From Brooklyn College MFA grad and middle school teacher Grattan, The Recent East unfolds the story of a woman who defected from East Germany and returns after the Wall falls, leaving upstate New York with her teenage children to reclaim her parents' mansion (50,000-copy first printing). Irish-born, London-based Nolan's unnamed narrator launches an affair with a charismatic but unstable writer and commits numerous Acts of Desperation to hold him (35,000-copy first printing). Won in an eight-way auction, Polzin's Brood is an intimate look at a woman ushering her four chickens through Minnesota cold and heat, tornados and predators. In The Northern Reach, Winslow portrays a small coastal Maine village whose residents are just getting by, with the narrative centered on a woman who lost her son at sea and is puzzled by a schooner under sail yet motionless across the water (75,000-copy first printing).

JUNE 2021 - AudioFile

Brown’s debut novel, set in Maine’s Penobscot Valley in the 1980s, is performed with a compelling, confident delivery. Narrator David Aaron Baker is the voice of David Almerin Ames, who recalls a community divided when a Penobscot teen set fire to the paper mill on the eve of its reopening, destroying the town’s livelihood. Penobscot elder Moses’s sonorous, wisdom-filled voice supports and defends the powerless. The anger of Almerin’s father, Arnoux, reacting to threats to his family, and the surprise in family friend/rival Liam’s voice when he faces the consequences of his actions are visceral, keeping the listener engaged. Narrator Nicole Alvater gives a realistic voice to Molly, the girl who lit the fuse. Altvater contributes significantly with her portrayal, including her smooth delivery of Penobscot words. N.E.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2021-01-15
A novel of place, myth, and clashing loyalties set in 1980s Penobscot, Maine.

Shortly after a team of Japanese investors visits a local paper mill with an eye toward reopening it, a 14-year-old member of the Penobscot Nation burns the building to the ground and disappears. The act sows discord through the economically challenged region. Enraged by the loss of prospective jobs, some demand swift vengeance for the perpetrator. Others, like the narrator’s mother, Falon Ames, who runs a local newspaper, argue that the event must be seen in its larger context; the mill, after all, had hardly been “an innocent victim”; its former owners had “knowingly discharged toxic chemicals and wastewater products…into the river, poisoning its fish and plants.” This dichotomy—between a mystical appreciation for the natural world and the environmentally extractive nature of work and industry—pervades Brown’s beautiful if uneven debut. While the arsonist and her father struggle to survive off the land as fugitives, Penobscot Bay lobsterman Lyman Creel inaugurates a parallel land-industry drama: Convinced that un-fished waters are wasted waters, Lyman lays his traps in the mouth of the Penobscot River, an act of overreach (the river rights belong to the Penobscot Nation) that helps motivate the narrator and his twin brother to begin sabotaging Lyman’s traps. Like many debuts, Brown’s first novel is imperfect. His dialogue sometimes veers toward preciousness at the expense of character development; his characters are often too accurately aware of the wider themes that shape their lives (“Some places are like portals to eternity,” says the narrator’s uncle. “You stand in them and look around, and you feel how long and unending the world is. You become a part of something beyond time. Maybe this is one of those places”); and the plot moves through increasingly convenient contortions as it hurtles toward its foreseeable crescendo. Yet despite these shortcomings, Brown tells a gripping tale. And in his hands the Penobscot region of the 1980s and '90s—with its eccentric cast of Vietnam veterans, hippy fugitives, gruff lobstermen, and Penobscot tribal members—comes wonderfully to life.

Mystical, gripping, rooted in the land—Brown may bang a little too hard on the keys, but he plays a compelling tune.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177139586
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/02/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos