No Man's Land
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
In this powerful, panoramic novel set in the late 1890s, in a sliver of rugged western wilderness, a fourteen-year-old girl named Davey—too young to be given a chance at creating her own life—finds herself raised by a group of eccentrics, hostile misfits who rescued her as an infant on a bloody battlefield. She roams the countryside with them, led by Reverend Brown, a charismatic false prophet, hosting revivals for unsuspecting believers while lingering on the cusp of unimaginable events.
Davey tries to locate a semblance of peace in this harrowing, beautiful place, but what she finds instead is an astonishing panoply of falsehoods and depravity, a vicious world comprised of murderers, thieves, and dancing bears. And in this unforgiving landscape of craggy beauty and singular resoluteness, she wages a fight against truth while traversing the delicate line between destiny and fate as she comes to understand the role Reverend Brown plays in her life.
No Man’s Land is part classic coming-of-age story, part unwavering portrait of the bloody price of power, a raw and bold novel about the search for family, and a grand story about an education in the pull of predestination and the responsibility of freewill. Haunting on every page, filled with sorrow and awe, and stunning in the tonality of its vision, No Man’s Land is an unflinching meditation on the legacy of violence, its senseless destructiveness, and the fearless dignity and tenderness required to rise above it.
This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The grandeur of British Columbia provides a backdrop for unspeakable violence and depravity. Set in the late 19th century, this sweeping novel follows teenager Davey as she struggles to find her way as part of a ragtag group of thieves and con artists roaming the Canadian countryside with their traveling tent revival. Though she lacks a formal education, Davey’s the philosopher-skeptic in her group—we loved watching her spar with the so-called holy man Reverend Brown…who’s actually evil personified. John Vigna’s vivid, descriptive prose turns the duo’s personal battle into a chilling story of power and control. We couldn’t turn away as Davey confronts nightmarish horrors in her dogged, perilous quest for freedom and independence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vigna's rugged and inventive debut brings the drama, violence and lyric intensity of the King James Bible to the cold, merciless climes of the Canadian wilderness. In 1902, 14-year-old Davey, a tenacious orphan with a cursed history, roams the Pacific Northwest with a gang of troubled men and women led by the charismatic yet sinister Reverend Brown. Davey is a no-nonsense girl with little concern for the afterlife, and she is frequently at odds with Reverend Brown, whose constant, lofty speechifying on God, violence, and sin strike her as bombastic. She tags along though, somewhat nourished by the gang's semblance of a family. Together, the group wanders from town to town, drumming up enthusiasm for Reverend Brown's revivals, each one leading up to a mass nude baptism. The crew scrapes together a sustainable life, but greed, lust, and the other corruptions eventually culminate in spectacular moments of bloodshed. Vigna is a master craftsman. His language feels ancient, and he paints an unforgiving landscape with great detail and majesty. Though Reverend Brown is no prophet, readers will find in Vigna a writer worth paying close attention to.