The opening sentences of THE WREN’S SONG by David Hudson efficiently sketch the novel’s setting, protagonist, and likely conflicts. Jerry is hiking in the wooded northwest coast of California through an old-growth Redwood forest that almost fell under the axes of lumberyard loggers 150 years earlier.

Detailed descriptions of the life forms growing along the path Jerry hikes—and many more throughout the book—reveal the author’s encyclopedic knowledge of the history and nature of this region’s ecosystems. His detailed portrayals invite us in:

High above him, lacy branches waved in the light air. From somewhere in the treetops came the call of a pileated woodpecker, the over-sized bird with the flaming red crest, its raucous cackle muted by distance. And off among the ferns, a wee brown Pacific wren serenaded him with virtuosic trills. Otherwise, the forest was as still as a church on a Monday morning.

Hudson’s rich understanding of the natural world goes beyond the woods as well, as in this portrait of an early-morning view of the Golden Gate Bridge: “Fog generated by the cold Humboldt Current poured through the narrow strait like white lava, obscuring all but the tops of the bridge towers.”

The story centers on Jerry Kowalski, a Vietnam War veteran and longtime environmental activist in love with the forest grove he has made his home—even relying on it to help treat his PTSD. When he discovers that the grove’s San Francisco-based owner plans to develop the area into an “ecologically friendly” resort, he haltingly starts a difficult battle to save the forest. He is joined by the developer’s granddaughter, Kaitlyn, a nature-loving teenager who cares deeply for both the land and her grandfather.

The book’s lovely portraits of the astonishing variety of flora and fauna living in an undeveloped old-growth forest include entire forest ecosystems sprouting out of the trees’ canopies, with their own ponds, arboreal offshoots, and animals living their whole lives without touching the ground. Even readers generally familiar with forest ecologies might discover—and enjoy—the fascinating details in this book.

Unfortunately, as fiction, the book disappoints. Its two-dimensional, stereotypical characters face predictable and oversimplified conflicts. Dialogue is flat. Each battle resolves easily—or, worse, is absent altogether, as with one potential scene that could have cast sympathy and some dimensionality on the villain’s character.

Successful fictional narratives around the topics of environmental abuses and climate change are both urgently needed and high bars to reach for even skilled fiction writers. Although THE WREN’S SONG fails to reach that bar, it is worth the read for its rich descriptive tapestry—and for a reminder of just why its precarious subject is so critical.

David Hudson’s THE WREN’S SONG’s beautiful portraits of the varied life forms in—and atop—old-growth forests render it worth the read.

~Anne Welsbacher for IndieReader