AMERICAN MARCHLANDS
Lance Weller's second novel is set in the pre-Civil War 1840s, in 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 West 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.
It is into this savage land that Tom Hawkins rode, a killer before his 18th birthday. With him travels Pigsmeat Spence, the haunted participant in the massacre of native women and children during the Black Hawk War, a man still mourning the loss of his beloved wife, and Flora, the beautiful slave abused 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.
AMERICAN MARCHLANDS is currently available in French and can be found in French independent bookstores as well as on Amazon.fr.