Marissa Hale. American Wild. Publish Pros, 2023.

The title of American Wild has a double meaning. Yes, it is a novel set in the wilderness of North America west of the Appalachians mostly in the 1780s, but it is also a wild story. And like The Frontiersmen, about a similar time and location, it is the novelization of true events.

In some ways, one could look at this as The Frontiersmen from a woman’s perspective, not only that the author is female, but that the main character is a lady. And we mean a lady. She is a French noblewoman whose fiancé is an officer fighting for France in the American Revolution. When Captain LeClerc returns after six years in North America, they marry and return to America. He sees more opportunity and freedom than he could experience in France in 1783.

However, he does not settle in one of the coastal cities or even one of the original thirteen colonies, He wants land to work over the mountains in the wilderness that is opening up. Much of the story takes place in what would become Kentucky. Not far from Mammoth Caves in western Kentucky there is a prominent hill, now a state park, called Frenchman’s Knob. Among other things we learn how the place got its name. Like The Frontiersmen, the story is based on much detailed research, and a reminder that even in the eighteenth century, people were coming to North America to start a new life from many countries.

And on the frontier it was a completely new life. Communication with the old world was sporadic at best and nonexistent for most. For many it was a new language and a new kind of government. When adding in the challenges of mere survival in the wild, we can only admire what some of our American forebears endured.

Victoire “Vittorie” Monet LeClerc is our main character. She is more than a mere fish out of water. Raised in the literal lap of luxury, her father took part in the Treaty of Paris. She had met Ben Franklin and John Adams when they came to France after the Revolution to negotiate America’s independence. Now she has come to their country, but not to Boston or Philadelphia, or even to someone’s Virginia plantation.

With her husband Gilbert, she does visit Virginia at first, but Lexington, Virginia, west of the Blue Ridge. The book mentions two of the main figures in The Frontiersmen, Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton, but the historical figures besides Captain and Mme. LeClerc are other scouts, notably William Smuthers and Henry Skeggs.

Skeggs (a.k.a. Scaggs) is another one of those woodsmen like Kenton who seems to have been everywhere. He knows the way to the land Gilbert has purchased and seems to know everyone else as well, including Ohio River pirates and the various Native Americans who pass through. (As The Frontiersmen suggests, there were apparently few Indians in Kentucky at the time it began to be settled.)

American Wild shows us the challenges of life in the wilderness—outlaws of various kinds, the necessity to produce everything to live on yourself, the loneliness. In the case of Mme. LeClerc, the loneliness was compounded because she spoke only French. A few other French speakers besides her husband show up from time to time, but until she masters English (about half a dozen years) she is on her own.

Still, most people settling the American wild are in similar positions and understand and care for each other. Even in small settlements, people begin to discover who has specific skills, and a division of labor naturally evolves. There is hard work and not much play, but American Wild tells a tale of struggle and ultimately success. Hard times, yes, but those things makes us appreciate what we have and what those who went before us accomplished. We personally have no horse in the Kentucky race, but American Wild and The Frontiersmen together weave a picture of historic America that readers will not be able to forget.