«BLOOD AND SOIL» - a mari usque ad mare #940819

New France, 4th August 1689. The Lachine Massacre.
When Mohawk warriors attack in the dead of night, the Martiny family is engulfed by the most brutal violence. Charles, an Italian builder who emigrated to the New World, fights tooth and nail to protect his wife and children. But it is not enough. Three of his children are abducted and adopted by the enemy tribe, lost forever. Only two survive the flight through the frozen forests.
Madeleine, Charles's wife, carries within her a pain no mother should ever know: the faces of her lost children haunting her every night, the certainty that somewhere beyond the borders of civilisation, her babies are growing up as strangers.
But tragedy is also rebirth.
Antoine Martiny, Charles's brother, refuses to surrender to fate. In the northern forests, he encounters Kwame, an African giant escaped from English slavery, and between them a bond of blood is forged, stronger than any chain. Together they rescue Mirelle, a woman broken by captivity, and Antoine makes her his bride.
While Charles rebuilds the family's home and fortune in Québec, Antoine dreams on a grander scale. Merchants speak of distant lands, of gold and ivory, of a black continent where a brave man can build an empire. And Kwame knows those lands. They are the lands from which he was torn.
Blood and Earth is the second volume of the epic saga A Mari Usque Ad Mare. A story of massacres and rebirths, of lost children and new roots, of men and women who refuse to be broken. From the violence of the American frontier to the first voyages towards Africa, this novel follows forty years of the Martiny family's history: their wars, their loves, their betrayals, and above all their stubborn will to survive.
Because memory is all that remains. And the Martinys never forget.