Savage Lands [Hardcover]

Clare Clark (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2010

It is 1704 and, while the Sun King Louis XIV rules France from the splendour of Versailles, Louisiana, the new and vast colony named in his honour, is home to fewer than two hundred souls. When a demand is sent requesting wives be dispatched for the struggling settlers, Elisabeth is among the twenty-three girls who set sail from France to be married to men of whom they know absolutely nothing. Educated and skeptical, Elisabeth has little hope for happiness in her new life. It is to her astonishment that she, alone among the brides, finds herself passionately in love with her new husband, Jean-Claude, a charismatic and ruthlessly ambitious soldier.

Auguste, a poor cabin boy from Rochefort, must also adjust to a startlingly unexpected future. Abandoned in a remote native village, he is charged by the colony’s governor with mastering the tribe’s strange language while reporting back on their activities. It is there that he is befriended by Elisabeth’s husband as he begins the slow process of assimilation back into life among the French.

The love Elisabeth and Auguste share for Jean-Claude changes both of their lives irrevocably. When in time he betrays them both, they find themselves bound together in ways they never anticipated.

With the same compelling prose and vividly realized characters that won her widespread acclaim for THE GREAT STINK and THE NATURE OF MONSTERS, Clare Clark takes us deep into the heart of colonial French Louisiana.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Clark (The Great Stink) bases her third novel on the true story of the first French settlers in America and the women who are sent to be their wives. Her dual protagonists—the novel begins as two narratives which then converge—are the independent Elisabeth Savaret and the curious youth, Auguste. Elisabeth sets herself apart from her gossipy sister brides-to-be, finding solace in her books, but when she meets her rugged husband, she softens into a devoted wife and hopeful mother. Auguste is assigned the task of learning the ways and language of the savages since alliance with the native population is key to France's position in the New World. Throughout the novel Elisabeth and Auguste experience all the tropes common to life in the colonies. Clark has many graces as a writer, but while she brims with enthusiasm over her novel's world and delights in describing every facet of it, her penchant for overwriting makes what could be a fast-moving romp into a slog. She is an assiduous researcher, but too eager to show it. Still, Clark's passion for her story overcomes and will please lovers of historical fiction. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

Clark’s third engrossing, painstakingly researched historical novel is set in the early 1700s in Louisiana, a colony populated by French settlers and named for Louis XIV. A group of 23 young girls is sent from France to be married there, among them Elisabeth Savaret, who is well educated and skeptical about finding happiness in the New World. Surprisingly, she falls almost obsessively in love with her husband, Jean-Claude, and their childless union becomes the core of the novel. Clark describes this backwater colony in meticulous detail—the mud, the stench, the mosquitoes, the freezing winters and stifling summers, but it is above all a political quagmire, a quicksand of duplicity and shifting alliances, because the French are engaged in fierce competition with the English for this inhabitable land. Clark’s third protagonist, whose life intersects with Elizabeth’s and Jean-Claude’s, is Auguste, a young Frenchman assigned to live with various Native tribes whose alliances will strengthen France’s position against the English. Clark’s vast store of historical and geographical detail enriches the portraits of her three vibrant characters, whose destinies are inextricably, and memorably, bound. --Deborah Donovan

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition, Author of The Nature of Monsters edition (February 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151014736
• ISBN-13: 978-0151014736
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #995,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

CLARE CLARK is the author of The Great Stink, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and The Nature of Monsters. She lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Savage Lands - Not Compelling, May 29, 2010

By 

B. Egan - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Savage Lands (Hardcover)

This book received good reviews, but get ready for a challenging read. The author's attempts at imagery can become tiresome when the reader wants the narrative to progress. The characters are never completely developed, and the story line is choppy. Because of the wide opinion on the book, it would seem to lend itself to Book club review.

Be prepared for a sluggish start. The early portion of the book is heavy with elaborate descriptions that delay rather than enhance the narrative. Some verbal images are distorted is a way so as to obscure their descriptive purpose. It can become annoying.

I recommend the reader be satisfied with not completely understanding the characters, their motives or their connections with one another. The author leaves the characters obscure, perhaps because the characters themselves are ill, or unfortunately developed. If so, this or the reason might have been conveyed more clearly. Empty characters can be developed. Why does Elizabeth immediately resent all the "chickens?" Is there not one among them with a single, admirable quality.

Being no expert on the early French settlements in Louisiana, I cannot address about the historical depiction. The description of social and political dynamics leaves much to the imagination. Clearly, despite Montaigne, Elizabeth's destiny was mainly determined by male figures in her life and only in small part of her own making.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Novel's problems are a deal-breaker, May 20, 2010

By 

L. Abel (California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Savage Lands (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Savage Lands begins with a very intriguing premise: Frenchwomen are needed in the French Louisiana colony in order to become wives. The year is 1703. The novel is a story about life in a new strange land. The major themes are the fate of the women (especially the main character, Elisabeth), difficulties of living in the new world, corruption, and the at times negative nature of human beings.

Despite the interesting premise Savage Lands is plagued by several problems that are in my opinion deal-breaking. To really enjoy a novel I need to have some vested interest in the characters. I don't need to love them but I can't be indifferent to what happens to them. Heck, even hating them is something because then you desire to see them fail. In this book the characters invoked neither hate or love...just general dislike. Elisabeth, the main character, becomes annoying very quickly. She thinks herself superior to other wives. She is meant to be independent and free thinking yet she inexplicably falls madly in love with her husband. Their love story is never fully fleshed out. Another problem with the novel was the enormous amount of details. I love rich and pertinent details but details for details sake gets old fast. Don't even get me started on the lack of dialogue. Overall I would have to say the problems really took away from the novel and prevented me from enjoying it.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.", December 27, 2009

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Savage Lands (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

In 1703, twenty-three girls of marriageable age embark on a perilous voyage from Paris to the French colony of Louisiana. Called "casket girls", these young women are destined for marriage to the colonists. While France seethes with the greed of speculation and the Mississippi Company forms to accommodate trading on a grand scale, the reality proves far different for those who arrive in the swampy bayou dotted with wooden shacks. The colonists and soldiers, slim in ranks, live meagerly, desperate to sustain a ragged existence, making treaties with local native tribes to counteract the English, who are also determined to conquer this land. Just as she did in The Nature of Monsters, Clark creates an utterly believable and daunting landscape, where Indian raids threaten and disease is rife, where settlers toil against incredible odds waiting for reinforcements from France.

The landscape is bleak, the problems formidable, but in Clark's impressive rendering of history at a turning point, the characters are richly drawn, alive on the pages with all the passion, danger, greed and fear that plagues these first Louisiana settlers. Most touching and memorable is Elisabeth Savaret. Disdaining the chatter and foolishness of the other women, Elisabeth claims the role of outsider. And unlike the others, her marriage to a French Canadian ensign in the army is filled with a wild passion that surprises her and threatens to overtake her life. Jean-Claude Babelon, Elisabeth's husband, makes springtime forays to the Indian camps, trading for goods and food, keeping his ear to the ground for the progress of the English, ambition and greed burning in his heart.

In time, Jean-Claude makes the acquaintance of a former cabin boy left to mingle with the Indians and learn their languages, August Guichard, reporting to the governor what he is able to learn. August thrives in this environment, making a fast friendship with Jean-Claude, eventually becoming part of the couple's charmed circle. But the serpent of betrayal brings about a wrenching event, part of the great drama unfolding in the fledgling colony. Clark captures the magnitude of the efforts at settlement, the extreme hardships, the passions that threaten to undo Elisabeth's and August's evolving participation in the hierarchy of the colony. The canvas is vast, tragic and magnificent, the characters caught in the vortex of history as distant from Paris as the moon. Clark proves, once again, her mastery of history and her deep understanding of human nature, colonial French Louisiana pulsing with the ambition and desperation of the settlers. Luan Gaines/2009.