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No Man's Land
A sprawling saga set in the Canadian wilderness of the late 19th century, about a teenaged girl named Davey, a charismatic fraudster, and the unbearable weight of fate.
In this powerful, panoramic novel set in the late 1890s, in a sliver of rugged British Columbia 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 eccentric, 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 composed of murderers, thieves, and dancing bears. And in this unforgiving landscape of craggy beauty and singular resoluteness, she wages a fight for 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 tale about an education in the pull of predestination and the responsibility of free will. 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.
In this powerful, panoramic novel set in the late 1890s, in a sliver of rugged British Columbia 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 eccentric, 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 composed of murderers, thieves, and dancing bears. And in this unforgiving landscape of craggy beauty and singular resoluteness, she wages a fight for 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 tale about an education in the pull of predestination and the responsibility of free will. 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.
- GenresFiction
336 pages, Paperback
Published September 28, 2021
2 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
About the author
John Vigna
8 books20 followersJohn Vigna's first book of fiction, Bull Head, was published to critical acclaim in Canada and the US in 2012, and in France by Éditions Albin Michel in 2017. It was selected by Quill & Quire as an editor's pick of the year and was a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. John was named one of ten writers to watch by CBC. His novel, No Man's Land, was published in Fall 2021. He lives in Steveston, BC, with his wife, the author Nancy Lee.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 27, 2022
I found out about this book from the author's mother, who is a delight on Facebook (she is my MIL's cousin). This was a really interesting read, with so many details about life back then and the Crowsnest area.
April 23, 2025
Bleak. So bleak. Nonstop violence and suffering and Stockholm syndrome.
February 28, 2023
So much of this book is doesn’t make logical or physical sense. Long, overly elaborated pages of text could be whittled down to a few sentences or paragraphs. Character growth is at a minimum..
I tried to give this book a shot. On many occasions I found myself starring at the book, contemplating an early return to the library. But, I kept up with the daily challenge of skimming through long winded paragraphs & timeline jumps, trying to reach a formidable ending… but nope.
In the end, I was stuck with a man’s (generally speaking) ignorant concept of pregnancy / loosing a child and a long drawn out story of sh^t luck.
I’d love to jump into this book a slap each character as hard as humanly possible.
However, with all that said… I do applaud the author for completing a novel. The amount of work that goes into conceptualizing, writing, proofing, rewriting a novel is (to me) unfathomable.
I tried to give this book a shot. On many occasions I found myself starring at the book, contemplating an early return to the library. But, I kept up with the daily challenge of skimming through long winded paragraphs & timeline jumps, trying to reach a formidable ending… but nope.
In the end, I was stuck with a man’s (generally speaking) ignorant concept of pregnancy / loosing a child and a long drawn out story of sh^t luck.
I’d love to jump into this book a slap each character as hard as humanly possible.
However, with all that said… I do applaud the author for completing a novel. The amount of work that goes into conceptualizing, writing, proofing, rewriting a novel is (to me) unfathomable.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews