Lost Nation by Jeffrey Lent
Set in the early nineteenth century, Lost Nation is about a
man known only as Blood. A man of learning and wisdom with a secret past that
has scorched his soul, Blood remakes himself as a trader, hauling with him
Sally, a sixteen-year-old girl won from the madam of a brothel over a game of
cards. Their arrival in Indian Stream -- a land where the luckless or outlawed
have made a fresh start -- triggers an escalating series of clashes that will
not only sever the master-servant bond between Blood and Sally, but also force
Blood to confront his own dreaded past and offer Sally a final escape. In prose
both lucid and seductive, the story carries us deeply into human and natural
conditions of extreme desolation and harrowing hardship, and at the same time
gives us the relentless beat of hope and, finally, the redeeming strength of
love.
(Post title taken from "Lost Nation" review by Ron Charles, www.powells.com)
