Frenchman

October 1803. Recruiting sergeants march into a quiet Normandy village, drums echoing off the walls. One by one the local young men are named and drafted into First Consul Bonaparte’s army. Half a world away, France had just signed Louisiana over to the newborn United States. Alban, a spirited farmhand still fired by Revolutionary ideals, is shipped to New Orleans to help “pacify” the new territory. There, he fires his musket to defend an enslaved boy and is hauled off to jail, facing the scaffold. His rescue comes at the hands of Toussaint Charbonneau, a wandering French trapper, who pulls Alban from the gallows and draws him into a wilderness expedition that will change both their lives.

Daniel Maghen