Idaho Librarian

Reviews

We all have our own views about what a logger does for a living. Jim LeMonds, a member of a multi-generation logging family, gives us another view. He offers an insider’s account of the logging industry from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present using the experiences of three generations of his family as well as historical sources to document this book. He tells how he worked as a choker for two summers while he attended college but decided that logging wasn’t for him. LeMonds believes his father, a logging truck driver, had got him these jobs hoping to discourage him from taking up logging as a career. The strategy worked. LeMonds decided that a career as an English teacher was the way for him to go. As a result we have a book which chronicles the logging world in the words of those who have worked in it. 

He covers each facet of the industry, discussing the many jobs that people do in the woods from setting chokers to bucking, topping, and falling trees or working the shovels. The author discusses the attractions and pitfalls of the work, and the difficulties that some of these men have had when they have tried to change professions. Anyone who has lived in an area which has logging as one of the industries can identify with the various people discussed in the book. We have all known people who have had career-ending injuries and have gone into other work or people who have had to take disability retirements because they can’t do the work any more. We have also known people who loved the outdoors and chose logging as a career because of that.

Although he presents his story of the people who log in the southwestern part of Washington, the information in the book holds true for other logging areas. LeMonds provides the reader with an honest assessment of the industry, the dangers inherent in logging, the advantages and disadvantages of working for large companies like Weyerhaeuser or for the gyppo outfits (the independent loggers who don’t work for big companies). He discusses not only the work, but factors like safety, unions, benefits (such as health, retirement and vacation), and the environmental issues such as maintaining clean water or preserving habitats for spawning salmon or endangered species like the Spotted Owl.

LeMonds has done an excellent job in writing this book. I found it hard to put down as it is very interesting and well written. Deadfall is a story about real people living in the twentieth century, working in a tough profession. LeMonds has used both personal and historical photographs to help the reader to better understand what he has written, and he has included an index, a glossary, and a short bibliography. Anyone interested in learning about the logging industry and the people who work in it will enjoy this book. I would recommend it for purchase by academic, public and high school libraries.

Other books the reader might enjoy include LeMonds’ book South of Seattle: Notes on Life in the Northwest Woods and Rock Burst by Bert and Marie Russell (a story about the lives of people in another Pacific Northwest industry: mining).