Here is a book in the great tradition of the novel: a vivid world that wraps and holds the reader who can well lose himself in its grandeur. The character is the beloved Abel Truman. The landscapes are huge. Abel's story is both simple and rich, the novel unforgettable.” —Annie Dillard
“Weller vividly paints epic events against the backdrop of beautiful but brutal landscapes. It's a story brimming with compassion…This tragic tale is the best Civil War novel since Cold Mountain. It's an important, compelling book.” —Library Journal, starred review
“There is much to savour in this big, bold debut, including Weller's splendid descriptions of wildlife encountered on 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
“War and remembrance combine powerfully in this rugged debut novel of the horrors of combat and the fierceness of nature.” —Publishers Weekly
“[An] elegiac story…Weller describes Northwest scenery with masterful detail.” —Seattle Times
“Wilderness is a masterful novel of incident and redemption, hugely entertaining, full of pathos and humanity—frankly, it's hard to believe that it's a debut. Fans of Charles Frazier and Cormac McCarthy alike will thrill at Weller's luminous prose and clear-eyed moral vision.” —Jonathan Evison, bestselling author of West of Here and All About Lulu
“Wilderness pulls no punches. The novel's descriptions are so visceral, the main character's struggles so gut wrenching, that it demands an equally full-bodied response from its reader…The most powerfully moving moments are those in which dark themes are momentarily vanquished, and the narrative's thin stream of hope, redemption and humanity rises to the surface.” —High Country News
“Lance Weller's magnificent Wilderness is a brilliant, singular achievement. Now and again comes a novel that is so wholly its own that any comparison shrivels away. Lance Weller has given us this not only in the tale, which is deeply compelling and superbly page-turning, but, most importantly, in his book's thoughtful and illuminating exploration of who we are and how we got here. These people are heartrendingly beautiful, fragile and resilient but also ugly, hateful and hurtful. And Weller masterfully raises the stakes as he draws these webs of humanity with prose constructed with compelling art and ease.” —Jeffrey Lent, author of In the Fall
“Tender and resonant, Weller's debut is not an epic saga of war, but a skillful exploration of the interconnectedness of humanity and the endurance of compassion.” —Shelf Awareness
“Lance Weller's first novel, Wilderness, recounts the harsh world of the Civil War and its aftermath unflinchingly. At the same time, he redeems it with flashes of tenderness as bright and ephemeral as the shooting stars that fascinate his protagonist, Abel Truman…With its acknowledgment of both horror and beauty, Wilderness is an impressive debut.” —BookPage
“Riveting…Comparisons to [Cold Mountain] are inevitable, but this may be the better book.” —Jackson Free Press
“Lance Weller's Wilderness is a remarkable novel. It reads like a dream of history, and reads at a fever pitch. Its description of the carnage in the Battle of the Wilderness is so vivid and unrelenting that readers will never forget it. Yet at the novel's heart is a gentle and diffident man who touches us with his humanity and courage. This is a stunning first novel.” —John Vernon, author of Lucky Billy
“Rendered in powerful, richly detailed language that is at once grim and deeply moving, Wilderness interweaves the heartbreaking narratives of Civil War survivors—veterans, civilians, former slaves—whose lives are wrecked by unthinkable violence yet sustained by the tragic beauty still to be found in the world. Lance Weller writes with a quiet urgency that brings an immediacy to the past in the damaged bodies and haunted souls of his characters. A magnificent achievement!” —John Pipkin, author of Woodsburner
“This beautifully crafted tale of the transformational period between the nation's most horrific cataclysm and the end of the century is peopled with characters fully formed and vivid, noble and depraved, who will linger in the reader's mind long after the last page has been turned.” —Lynn Schooler, author of Walking Home and The Blue Bear
“Wilderness reawakens in us what we knew while discovering for the first time the work of the great writers—what it means to fall into the lives of characters riveting in their complexity, and to be so utterly transported into a tale and compelled through its pages. Set in the war-torn South and the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, this is the story of a country torn in two and of the hard healing afterward, of Abel Truman, a simple soldier, who journeys through the savagery of war and lawless men to a place of redemption. An exquisite telling, Lance Weller's language evokes the moments that otherwise render us mute. This book is a knockout.” —Claire Davis, author of Winter Range and Season of the Snake
“Any war, whether it is the American Civil War or the Vietnam War, inflicts wounds and many scars. Physical and mental scars. Truman carries both and finds they will not let him go. As in Karl Marlantes' Matterhorn the reader is living in the battle with the men screaming when the metal bullet peels by their ear, watching their buddies get blown up right in from of them, the smell of burning flesh, both human and horse, penetrating their nostrils until they can almost no longer breathe. Much credit is due to Lance Weller, this incredibly talented writer who can bring to life such a battle as The Wilderness. Weller has crafted a novel of stories within stories, all interwoven in prose so exquisite and descriptive that you will want to read Wilderness more than one time, and all in one sitting to capture this novel in its salvific beauty. Put aside your day, open up Wilderness and take a dive into this fabulous work of fiction.” —Annie Philbrook, Bank Square Books
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
A wounded Civil War veteran reckons with thieves, racism and the torments of his past. Weller's debut novel alternates between 1864 and 1899 to follow the life of Abel Truman, who fought for the Confederacy before moving to the Pacific Northwest. Much of the action in the Civil War chapters focuses on the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia, a particularly bloody affair, and Weller relates the action in disarmingly visceral detail, blasted faces, spilled bowels and all. That violence is paralleled by Abel's own unhappy past, in which his infant daughter and wife died in quick succession. In the 1899 chapters, Abel is living an isolated life with his dog before he falls afoul of a pair of thieves working their way down the Pacific Coast. The alternating chapters essentially make for two redemption stories--the first a chronicle of Abel's awareness of the folly of racism and the futility of war, the second a tale of human capacity for not just survival, but heroism. Weller relates all this in flagrantly Faulkner-ian language, thick with nature imagery and long sentences that strive to swallow the world whole: "The sun was bright in the leafed trees, upon grass slick with caught rain, and the man-filled road was as protean and indomitable as a river flowing seaward." Weller's command of this style is sometimes shaky, at times obscuring plot points or overdramatizing particular moments. And the linguistic finery serves a fairly simplistic fable on kindness and brotherhood. (Abel Truman's very name hints at how morally uncomplicated the protagonist is.) But Weller's finer moments are marked by some spectacular sentences: He finds an unlikely beauty in the violence-torn settings, as when a bullet passes a soldier's neck "like the first quick kiss of a shy girl." A familiar war story, but told with verve and sturdy, biblical intonations.
