Lost Nation
The unique characters who settled extreme northern New Hampshire–which in 1838, was disputably Canadian rather than American territory–are tested by each other, the harsh landscape, and an unrelenting fate in Lent’s exceptional historical novel. This is a story of place and of people, and the quest by the latter to fit into the former.
Blood, a determinedly mysterious drifter, arrives in the Indian Stream country leading an ox-cart filled with rum, ammunition, drygoods, food staples, a mastiff guard dog, and Sally, the uncivilized teenaged girl he purchased at a brothel in Portland, Maine. He sets up as a merchant, selling supplies and drink to the local men, and selling Sally, too. The locals regard the ill-matched pair with suspicion. All the while, Blood and Sally engage in a personal struggle for acceptance in each other’s eyes, an effort hampered by their sordied histories, and the fact that neither can afford tenderness, or emotional ties.
Blood and Sally are both caught up in the ongoing disputes between white settler and native, the law-enforcing sheriff to the south and the lawless trappers to the north. Death and dismemberment, battles and brutality, cannot quench their thirst to survive, or satisfy their hunger for an accumulation of cash that might safeguard them from the horrors they have escaped.
In his evocative yet graphic style, Lent brings to life the hardships and bleakness of early American life, and just as skillfully depicts the spirit and the dreams, and even the madness, that ensured the survival of a new nation.
