Savage Lands - Softcover

"Vigorous and intense, energetic and absorbing" (Hilary Mantel)

"The book is vivid with historical details, the characters intense with drama and feeling... A story to lose yourself in, an intense and satisfying read" (Sarah Vine The Times)

"Richly and densely textured, serious, intelligent, passionately written, and with more than a hint of gothic, the story pushes the reader to examine its central point: who are the savages?" (Elizabeth Buchan Sunday Times)

"Well told, and well paced, with an easy narrative flow. The story offers strong personalities and a complicated, interesting plot...I felt secure in the accuracy of her picture of the time and place... Clare Clark's story and her history ring absolutely and very sadly true" (Ursula K Le Guin Guardian)

"Intricately plotted and thick with intrigue, Savage Lands gives us an insight into an overlooked era" (Stephanie Bishop Times Literary Supplement)

It is 1704 and, in the swamps of Louisiana, France is clinging on to its new colony with less than two hundred men. Into this hostile land comes Elisabeth Savaret, one of twenty-three women sent from Paris to marry men they have never met. With little expectation of happiness, Elisabeth is stunned to find herself falling passionately in love with her husband, infrantryman Jean-Claude Babelon.

But Babelon is a dangerous man to love. Witness to Elisabeth's devotion is another of his acolytes, Auguste, a young boy despatched to act as a go-between with the 'redskins'. When both Elisabeth and Auguste find their love challenged by Babelon's duplicity, the consequences are devastating.

Longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010.