A Mari Usque Ad Mare

From One Sea to Another

From the salt of the Mediterranean to the frozen edge of the world.

1653: the docks of Livorno are a theatre of dreams and tar, where one man’s choice will echo across centuries. Carlo Martini, a porter’s son bound to the rhythm of the tides, sees his world collapse when a devastating plague turns his home into a city of ghosts. Driven by a dying promise, he flees the salt-stained ports of Marseille for the brutal winters of New France. Alongside a resilient band of settlers and the courageous Filles du Roi, Carlo expected to find a blank wilderness, only to encounter a world already written in blood and arrows. In this land that never forgets, where the drums of the Iroquois herald an uncertain dawn, they must learn that survival is a pact, not a guarantee.

From the warmth of Italy to the vastness of an untamed continent, a lineage is born to bridge two oceans.

When the map ends and the forest begins to breathe, will you have the courage to write the first line of a new world?

Blood and Soil

The soil demands blood. Memory offers no mercy.

1689: what was meant to be the dawn of a dream in the New World becomes the most brutal of nightmares.

When Mohawk warriors strike in the dead of night, the Martiny family is engulfed by senseless violence. Carlo "Charles" Martini, an Italian builder who sought a future in New France, fights with every fibre of his being to protect his own, but fate is cruel: three of his children are snatched away, destined to grow up as strangers within the enemy tribe. While Charles struggles to rebuild his life within the walls of Québec, his brother Antoine refuses to surrender. In the northern wilderness, a blood bond forged with Kwame, a man escaped from the shackles of slavery, ignites an ambition that stretches far beyond the frontier, reaching towards the gold and the shadows of Africa.

Blood and Soil is the gripping second volume of the epic adventure saga A Mari Usque Ad Mare. A forty-year odyssey of rebirth and betrayal, sweeping from the savage American frontier to the first voyages towards the Dark Continent, following the iron will of a family that refuses to be broken.

In a world ruled by chaos, the only bond that endures is the one etched in the scars of the past.

The Breath of Africa

ONE BLOODLINE. THREE CONTINENTS. AN EMPIRE FORGED IN THE FIRES OF SURVIVAL.

In the frozen heart of eighteenth-century Québec, Madeleine Cartier Martini governs a legacy built on steel and secrets. From her circular study, she pulls the threads of a global trade network, navigating a world where a single degree of error can cost a son’s life. As the winter snow muffles the sounds of the French colonies, the Martini name remains a shield against the encroaching shadows of the British and the Dutch. Yet, as she unrolls the family tree, Madeleine must confront a devastating truth: they are no longer just a family, but a mechanism of power that reproduces itself endlessly. In a world of predators, even a matriarch can find herself hunted.

Across the Atlantic, where the scorched earth of Africa meets the relentless tide of the trade wars, Antoine Martini and his son Gabriel fight to hold Fort Martini against all odds. Alongside them stands Toussaint, the legendary ‘Black Lightning’, a man whose vulnerability is as exposed as his courage in the heat of battle. Here, the ‘sons of snow and blood’ must blend European ambition with the unyielding spirit of the African coast, defending a future that belongs to the bastards and the brave. But when the jungle breathes, it whispers of a betrayal that no fortress can keep out.

As Charles II embarks on a perilous voyage from the gold-dusted shores of Benin towards the unknown horizons of the East, the boundary between blood and capital dissolves. A new generation of Martinis, mixed, illegitimate and fierce, must prove their worth in a landscape where memory is the only currency that matters. From the high seas to the heart of the Ashanti empire, they will learn that the Martini system is not just about profit, but about the ferocity with which one defends a name.

To claim the future, they must first survive the breath of a continent that never forgets.

Legacies are not inherited; they are bled for.

The Indies and Silk

One thread of silk to bind the world. One secret to unravel an empire.

In the waning glory of Florence, the Medici’s gold no longer glitters as it once did. As the silk trade falters and the shadow of ruin looms over the Tuscan capital, a desperate letter from the frozen wilds of Quebec sparks a gamble that will alter the course of history. From the merchant tables of Italy to the treacherous banks of the Thames, a new path is being forged, but in the race for prosperity, the price of entry is often paid in more than just coin.

Across the vast expanse of the "Martini route", the scent of spices and the shimmer of fabric mask a growing darkness. While bankers in exile plot their return and explorers navigate the sweltering docks of Calicut, an ancient rhythm begins to pulse from the heart of the jungle. It is a ceremonial drum, a hypnotic warning that some treasures are guarded by ghosts who do not take kindly to the touch of foreign greed. To conquer the market, one must first survive the shadows that follow every ship like a silent shroud.

As Charles II faces a destiny written in the humid air of a distant bay, the boundaries between commerce and curse finally dissolve. A wooden cross, polished by the hands of the unseen, points like a loaded weapon at the heart of an era, marking the end of innocence for those who dared to cross the seas. The world is shrinking, the maps are being redrawn, and the hunters are about to discover they have been the prey all along.

The silk may be soft, but the hands that weave it are stained with the ink of a final, inescapable judgment.

The Sun and the Cross

A sun that warms everyone. A cross that protects no one.

1756: in the reductions of Paraguay the Jesuits have taught the Guaraní to read, to sing and to work the land in common. Then a treaty signed far away, in Madrid, hands those lands to Portugal, and the Society orders its fathers to obey. Father Lorenzo Malaspina stays with his people as far as Caiboaté, where in little more than an hour the armies of two crowns put out the only experiment that took the Gospel seriously. When the Jesuits are driven out of Brazil as well, all that is left of that world is a bell and a little girl sold at the market in Rio.

1760: the Brama enters the bay of Guanabara with Charles II Martini, his sister Inés, Kofi Osei and the children, still young. They are looking for a safe harbour for the India route, and they find a colony that lives on gold and on men in chains: the mines of Vila Rica running dry, the king's fifth that nobody wants to pay, the slavers blessed on the quay at Salvador. For thirty years the family puts down roots between Rio, the Minas Gerais and the Andes, where Kojo goes down into the silver mines of Potosí and watches the revolt of Túpac Amaru end in the square at Cusco, while in Quebec the Martini house empties and in Ouidah there remain those who never left.

The Sun and the Cross is the fifth volume of the saga A Mari Usque Ad Mare. From the missions of Paraguay to the mines of the Minas Gerais, from a merchant's ledgers to the silver of Potosí: thirty-two years in which faith walks beside power and becomes an instrument of conquest, conversion is an obligation and the ideal breaks under the weight of reality, until 21 April 1792, when Tiradentes is hanged in Rio de Janeiro and Inés closes the ledgers of a family that has learned to survive everything.

The cross is a sign that has not protected.