Promotional Information

Epic, heartbreaking and poetic, Wilderness is the story of the origins of a nation. It is a tale of a horrific war and the great evil it ended, of the kindness of strangers and the unbreakable bonds of memory and love.

About the Author

Lance Weller has published short fiction in several literary journals. He won Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A Washington native, he has hiked and camped extensively in the landscape he describes. He lives in Gig Harbor, WA, with his wife and several dogs.

Reviews

What's most gorgeous here is the language, Weller's descriptions of the natural world, the changing emotional terrain within his characters, and violence. The author seems to be reminding us that the Wilderness remains both without and within. A remarkable debut, deeply affecting and heartfelt
*Gil Adamson, author of The Outlander*

Epic ...There is much to savour in this big, bold debut, including Weller’s splendid descriptions of wildlife encountered in the trek ...This is a novel in which history’s sound and fury is drowned out at last by the silence of the wilderness
*Financial Times*

This portrait of a life is built up masterfully by Weller, in his debut novel, into a compassionate tale ... There is lots of great, descriptive landscape writing here, and all the flashbacks to the war are rendered in just as much evocative detail. It's a beautiful novel, resplendent in ornate, flowing prose
*Herald*

An American Civil War epic for fans of Cold Mountain ... Traumatising, character-driven and written with serious literary intent
*We Love This Book*

War and remembrance combine powerfully in this rugged debut novel of the horrors of combat and the fierceness of nature. Thirty-five years after the Civil War, Abel Truman, a reclusive, isolated survivor of the cauldron of fire that raged in the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness, where he fought as a Confederate soldier and lost the use of his left arm, begins a journey home. In a tone that owes much, sometimes too much, to Hemingway, he braves the violence of Washington's Olympic Peninsula landscape and people as he ruminates on his losses and returns from the outer limits of civilization. Weller's depiction of the old soldier's journey through memory is the strongest part of the book, with long, vivid passages that evoke the sensory assault of combat and its aftermath. The small details of the battlefield, from the field hospital where his friends died to his glimpse of "a dented tuba lying lost in the middle of a swampy little creek and loose horses too numerous for counting" are potent Civil War prose, a respectful echo of Stephen Crane and Ambrose Bierce. Less successful are the scenes near the end of his trek, where race and violence and kindness jumble together in a murky variety of redemption and sacrifice. Agent: JET Literary Associates. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Debut author Weller (winner of Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers) alternates between two stretches in the life of Abel Truman: his weeks as a Confederate soldier in the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, when his arm was lost and his friends killed, and the harrowing stretch in 1899 when aging Abel abandons his hermit lifestyle on the coast of Washington State to take one last try at redemption, but encounters interference from some depraved dog fighters. Weller vividly paints epic events against the backdrop of beautiful but brutal landscapes. It's a story brimming with compassion for those-including Abel, his wife and child, his soldier companions, his dog, newly freed slaves, Chinese immigrants, and a mixed-race couple-caught in fateful, savage events. VERDICT Spanning the continent, this tragic tale is the best Civil War novel since Cold Mountain. It's an important, compelling book for fans of literate historical fiction, dog lovers, or true believers in the resilience of the human spirit. Only those who can't handle extreme violence should stay away. [See Prepub Alert, 3/18/12.]-Neil Hollands, Williamsburg Regional Lib., VA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.