I finished the manuscript of Against the Grain. But it’s never finished. I’m still reading it aloud cover to cover, getting feedback, tightening things up. Here’s my third stab at the dreaded jacket copy. Let me know what you think in the comment section, please. Cover still under construction.
AGAINST THE GRAIN
Jacket Copy
By the time they reached Logan’s tree, Diana had lost all sense of time and proportion. The sun hovered eight feet off the ground, a tiger’s eye shafting orange light between redwood giants. She was an insect suspended in amber as Logan clipped her into a harness. He was explaining how to climb, but amber suffused her ears, her throat, her mind as if the trees were talking to her.
Later, wrapped in a sleeping bag on a platform two hundred feet off the ground, they surveyed an ocean of luminescent mist pricked by treetops, saplings pushing into a new world. Her privileged world fell away like an empty husk. The only thing that mattered was this palm of earth offered to the sky. People didn’t have to choose between life in square houses and star-pierced infinity. They could have it all, an Eden, right here. All they had to do was choose.
But her father threatened it all.
Atlas Jamison, a Wall Street financier with a mysterious past, staged a hostile takeover of Pacific Lumber and tripled the cutting rate, reducing these ancient beings to lawn furniture.
Diana joins forces with Logan who believes Pacific Lumber killed his father, Zeff, the surfer-dude turned monkey-wrencher, and unstoppable indigenous lawyer for the trees, Jessica Wild, as they risk their lives to save the redwoods, the planet, and themselves.
Based in part on the true story of violent clashes in Northern California between corporate raiders, loggers, and activists during Redwood Summer 1990, Against the Grain is an action-packed Overstory and a mystical Damnation Spring.
Available in bookstores and Amazon by Earth Day.
The Truth Behind the Story
Here are just a few of the resources I relied on when researching the novel.
A Writing Life: Lâle Davidson 
Can’t wait to read it!!
LikeLike
Thank you!
LikeLike
I think the essence of the jacket cover is the second paragraph, followed by “her father threatened it all” and maybe a very slim slice of the rest. It seemed as whole to be too much ‘splaining and could be reduced to be more of a teaser, not the plot essence. I also like the last para about based on a true story. I was always a fan of Julie Butterfly Hill. She’s still out there, last I looked. Neat project!
LikeLike
Thank you. Yes– I’ve reached out to Julia Butterfly Hill.
LikeLike