Reviewed by Saifunnissa Hassam for Readers' Favorite

David Loux’s historical novel, The Lost Seigneur, is a gritty, gripping, and engrossing saga of the Laux family set in early 18th-century colonial America and France. This is a sequel to the first novel, Chateaux Laux, in the Chateau Laux Odyssey. I was able to read this as a stand-alone because characters and key details from the first novel are interwoven skilfully into the second one. Pierre Laux is a pioneer French immigrant farmer in Penn’s Woods near Watertown, Pennsylvania. His daughter Magdalena receives a letter with the startling news that her grandfather, Seigneur Jean-Pierre du Laux, is alive and will soon arrive in Philadelphia. Pierre, Jean-Pierre’s son, is also shocked at the news. His father disappeared from their home in France several decades ago, when Pierre was 13. Unknown to the family, Jean-Pierre du Laux, a French nobleman and courtier to the French king, was wrongfully imprisoned in France for decades. In the intervening years, Pierre migrated to America. The story twists and turns as the individual lives of key characters emerge, lives filled with indescribable loss, tragedies, horror, and fear, intertwined with grit, courage, love, and hope.  

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Lost Seigneur for its compelling characters in a French-American pioneer family in early 18th-century colonial America and France. I particularly enjoyed how the story intertwines their lives. The story gained great depth through the individual stories of these four characters. I liked how the story transitions from chapter to chapter for each character, and at the same time, the geographical setting changes, going back and forth from southern France to the Penn Woods in Pennsylvania in the New World. I particularly liked the character development of Seigneur Jean-Pierre du Laux, as he walks along a dusty Toulouse road, a frail old man, recently freed from decades of wrongful imprisonment and determined to return home to his family. I loved the turning points of how the lives of the key characters change in unexpected ways. I loved the poignant moments, expressed in subtle yet powerful ways through the narration. This is a family saga about profound personal loss, courage and resilience, and discovering hope and love. I highly recommend David Loux’s The Lost Seigneur to readers who enjoy reading about early colonial America, French-American pioneers in the New World, and France and its religious conflicts in the 16th to 18th centuries.