Savage lands

Description

Love and betrayal among the first French settlers in the New World. Historial fiction at its absolute best – page-turning, though-provoking, heart-breaking.Louisiana, 1704, and France is clinging on to a swampy corner of the New World with only a few hundred men. Into this precarious situation arrive Elizabeth Savaret, one of a group of young women sent from Paris to provide wives for the colonists, and Auguste Guichard, the only ship's boy to survive the crossing. Elizabeth brings with her a green-silk quilt and a volume of Montaigne's essays; August brings nothing but an aptitude for botany and languages. Each has to build a life, Elizabeth among the feckless inhabitants of Mobile who wait for white flour to be sent from France; Auguste in the 'redskin' village where he has been left as hostage and spy. Soon both fall for the bewitching charisma of infantryman Jean-Claude Babelon, Elizabeth as his wife, Auguste as his friend. But Babelon is a dangerous man to become involved with. Like so many who seek their fortunes in the colonies, he is out for himself, and has little regard for loyalty, love and trust. When his treachery forces Elizabeth and Auguste to start playing by his rules, the consequences are devastating.Rich in tactile detail, heart-wrenching in its portrayal of people clinging on to their humanity against the brutality of nature and commerce, this is historical fiction at its best. So absorbing is Clare Clark's recreation of eighteenth-century Louisiana that the reader won't want to leave it, even though the unstable ground on which New Orleans is putting down its first foundations proves far from hospitable.

Description

In 1704 the French colony of Louisiana needs wives for the struggling settlers and Elisabeth and twenty-three other girls are dispatched to satisfy the request. The skeptical bride soon falls in love with her charismatic and ruthlessly ambitious soldier-husband, Jean-Claude, a passion which is shared by an abandoned cabin boy, Auguste, who has also fallen under the spell of the dashing Jean-Claude. When in time Jean-Claude betrays them both, the two find themselves bound together in ways they never anticipated.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Savage landsHarvill Secker2010-01-01
• Savage LandseBookRandom House Publishing Group2010-01-01
• Savage landsHoughton Mifflin Harcourt2010-01-01
• Savage LandsPenguin Random House2010-01-01
• Savage LandsHoughton Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Reference Publishers2010-01-01
• Savage LandsPenguin Random House2010-01-01