Sugaring Down

by Dan Chodorkoff

The year in 1968 and idealistic anti-war activists David and Jill have moved to an abandoned hill farm in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom to start a commune—hoping to refocus their efforts to build a new society. Joined by a rotating cast of committed activists and fairweather freeloaders alike, David and Jill are confronted by the harsh environment of northern Vermont, where they discover the complexity of country life, make connections with their new neighbors (good and bad), and struggle to find their place until the fissures blowing apart the larger anti-war movement reach their collective at Zion Farm. Sugaring Down burrows below the surface of sixties counterculture and the New Left to explore the contradictions and passions that lead to the implosion of the protagonists’ dreams, and their turns down two very different paths."When I read Dan Chodorkoff's historically vivid Vermont novel, I thought of Faulkner's famous "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Sugaring Down takes place in the turbulent 60's, when the Vietnam war was malignantly in our communal hearts and minds. But Chodorkoff's story is also about the friendships and fateful decisions we made in our flurried passions, at the same time hauntingly sensed that we may never again feel quite so alive.—Howard Norman, author of The Ghost Clause

Genres: Historical Fiction

458 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 8, 2022

Reviews

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

The year is 1968 and America is divided. Jill and David are anti-war activists. They are idealist dreamers who want to change the world. They move to a small farm in Vermont, owned by a relative of Jill's, to start a commune as a base for the resistance. They plan that other friends would live at the farm and their lives would all be cool and groovy as they plotted a way to end the war. We find out from the first that they may want to change the world but they are ill prepared to run a farm. They arrive in the midst of winter to a cabin that has no insulation and not enough wood to get them through the winter. They need to learn how to farm and depend on their nearest neighbors who have lived in their home in the mountains for many years. As spring arrives, they begin to get a revolving number of visitors. David tries to put them all to work by assigning jobs but some of them are just there for a place to go and have no intention of contributing their time to working. Some of the new people who move to the house are more interested in guns and violence than non-violence plus there are older people in the small town who look down on those 'useless hippies' so they are always in some danger in the place that they hoped to find love and peace. When winter arrives again, many of the residents move back to the warmth of the city. Will David and Jill be able to maintain their dream of creating a base for the resistance or will the work involved in running a farm in Vermont take most of their time. Will they lose faith in their original dreams??

This is a very character driven novel with David and Jill telling the story. I liked both characters - hard working David more than idealist Jill. My only complaint about the book is that I thought it was a bit too long and bogged down several times but overall this is great story of dreams for the future versus the reality of day to day life.

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

[Matt Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

--ARC provided by LibraryThing and Fomite Press in exchange for an honest review.--

Chodorkoff presents a novel that is strongly reminiscent of John Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle, seasoned with Richard Brautigan and Jefferson Airplane. That might sound terrible but, in the end, Sugaring Down is a carefully-constructed and richly-told, first-person narrative that wraps the reader in the bipolar nature of the late-1960s' counter-culture: utopian collectivism and radical activism sitting side-by-jowl until no longer tenable. Chodorkoff maintains a profound sense of place -- of setting, emotional state, and the interplay between the two -- throughout, and it's the real strength of the book. The players are ephemeral in the long run, and the crises of 1969 are compared time and again to the labor/anarchist actions of the early 1920s that also shook the area; even the long-time residents have finite lives. The mountains are forever, and the forest will outlive the story. I was a kid in northern New England (Maine, if not Vermont) during the period described, and I can see several of my older cousins in the main characters; their stories are long obscured, but the land continues. Chodorkoff is clear about that, and it works; there's more than just invention in this fiction.

The book should have a soundtrack, though. Dylan, definitely; maybe some Country Joe and the Fish, Melanie, Sly and the Family Stone. The prose is rich but the two narrative characters, David and Jill, live so much inside their own heads that it gets claustrophobic in there; the participation of their older neighbors Leland and Mary carry a great load of the emotional effect of Sugaring Down. Perhaps that was also intentional.

As much as I enjoyed this book, the utopian idealism and hope the kids carry into the story, and the joy of the Vermont wilderness that carries it all are overwhelmed by the grim, the inevitable failures, and the overly-heavy characters Mark and Big Bill. Steinbeck's 1936 novel merits re-reads but, for me, I'm not sure I'll want to revisit this one any time soon.

[Archer Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An idealistic pair of late 60's anti-war youths David and Jill found an off-the-grid commune in Northern Vermont staring in the Spring of '68. Their idealism attracts more kids with the same general political mindset and limited agricultural experience. Despite the odds and with the assistance of an elderly neighboring couple of native farmers who had previously owned the tract of their commune they manage to survive for a while. They also encounter varying degrees of hostility from the local community for their politics. Most of the members of their group desert when Winter sets in. Their neighbors introduce them to maple sugaring as an enterprise hence the title of this book. A motorcyclist gang style individual visits them and offers to instruct them in fire arms as protection from the hostile folks that have begun harassing them. David's non-violent attitude are challenged by the visitor. His machismo proves irresistible to Jill who leaves David on his own while moving to New York City to take part with a clandestine group of violent anti-war radicals with her newfound boyfriend. This turns out to be a front for a criminal smuggling operation. After Jill is tricked into planting a bomb in a military recruiting office she finds herself on the lamb. Her mother helps spirit her away back to rejoin David. The conclusion of their harrowing adventure I'll leave to the reader.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A group of free thinking college kids head to a farm in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont to create new way of life. It's the height of the Viet Nam protests, and the group find ways to use the farm to support the anti war effort. Communal living is not the paradise everyone envisions, and ideas clash. Winter is harsh and some head back to the easier life in the city. Even the kids who stay are divided in how they should create a revolution.

[Dayton Martindale · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun and thought-provoking novel about some of the conflicts between different approaches to revolutionary organizing as a group of young late-60s antiwar activists attempt to establish a collective in Vermont. The highlight was the main character’s growing relationship with his garden, his dog, and the land, but I think he made some out-of-character choices and actions toward the very end.