AMERICAN MARCHLANDS is set in the pre-Civil War 1840s, a time of American expansion westward when venturing beyond the defined borders of the United States was akin to stepping off into a moral void, a lawless, barely-charted marchland, a cauldron visited regularly by violence and atrocity.
The American marchland was ferociously contested by pioneers, outlaws, Indian tribes, the US Army, runaway slaves, scalp hunters, and dispossessed Mexican nationals, each vainly staking their claim to a piece of it only to be challenged by another claimant.
It is into this savage land that Tom Hawkins rode, a killer before his 18th birthday, with Pigsmeat Spence, the haunted participant in the massacre of squaws and native children during the Black Hawk War, a man still mourning the loss of his beloved wife, and Flora, the beautiful slave whored out by her now-dead master and herself a killer of men, each of them together seeking to make his or her own way in the world, to pursue their elusive dreams of freedom.
Excerpt from
AMERICAN
MARCHLANDS
“If
this isn’t the United States, then what is it?” asked
Flora.
“No
place at all, I don’t reckon,” Pigsmeat said. “Look at it.
Who’d be out here save savages and fools?”
Tom spoke up then to tell them that this was all still and only a marchland, still and only an untamed place between countries where men might walk but no laws followed. He said it would take blood and fire and metal to make this country anything but a wild marchland but that men would do it because that was what men always did: brought blood and fire and metal with them wherever they went.
AMERICAN MARCHLANDS is available in French from Editions Gallmeister
Praise for AMERICAN MARCHLANDS
Un très grand roman.
A very great novel.
Charybdis, Paris
Avec une histoire d'une puissance émotionnelle rare, l'auteur met en exergue des personnages brisés, touchants, qui ne cessent d'avancer vers l'avenir et ce malgré un passé lourd de menaces et de larmes.
With a story of a rare emotional power, the author highlights the broken, touching, characters who continue to move toward the future, and this despite a heavy past threats and tears.
Le style de Lance Weller ne plie jamais, il essemble aux battements d'un coeur rouge sang, il ressemble à la vie et la mort. Il vous asphyxie. On en redemande.
The style of Lance Weller will never bend, it looks like the beat of a blood-red heart, it looks like life and death. He is suffocating you. We want more.
L’écriture mêle une grande précision naturaliste et une subtile poésie au service d’un humanisme lucide mais sincère. Lance Weller a un véritable don pour dire la cruauté des hommes comme leur capacité à aimer, qui semblent toutes deux sans limites.
Writing mixes naturalistic precision and a subtle poetry in the service of a lucid but sincere humanism. Lance Weller has a real gift for say the cruelty of men like their ability to love, who seem to be both limitless.
L’Amérique.
Milieu du
XIXème siècle.
Des guerres
incessantes entre les Mexicains, les Américains, les
Indiens.
Un chariot
qui suit sa route avec à son bord Tom, Pigsmeat et
Flora.
Un corps
conservé dans du sel, et une vengeance.
Il n’en faut
pas plus à Lance Weller pour nous offrir un roman
éblouissant.
America.
Mid-nineteenth
century.
Continual
wars between the Mexicans, the Americans, the
Indians.
A
carriage which follows its course with on board Tom, Pigsmeat and
Flora.
A
body preserved in salt, and a vengeance.
Lance
Weller does not need any more to offer us a dazzling
novel.
Dans ce roman qui emporte son lecteur de la première à la dernière page, Lance Weller dénoue le fil de ces destinées inoubliables pour nous parler d'humanité et de barbarie.
In this novel that takes the reader from the first to the last page, Lance Weller unravels the thread of these unforgettable destinies to talk about humanity and barbarism.