PositiveSan Francisco ChronicleWhether describing the logging or commercial fishing industries, Marlantes shows an extraordinary knowledge of his subjects, and in the scenes dedicated to these hardscrabble endeavors, the story hums with energy ... The implicit tensions feel timeless and still relevant ... the urgency of his voice lifts off the page. The question for this reader is not whether the experience of the Koski family transcends time — certainly it does—but whether the novel needs all its bulk to do so. At times the story feels redundant ... If Deep River is meant to serve as a new American epic, it overreaches. But as a portrait of a complicated American era, and one family’s mighty struggle against it, the novel is both fascinating and fierce. And well worth the hours it asks of its reader.
