THE BALLAD OF FRANCO LOCO The Madness, The Music, The Murder
They called him a devil. A myth. A drunk with a saber and a death wish.
The Legend of Franco Loco was being carved into the land with fire, gunpowder, and blood. Chased by ghosts and haunted by the past, he rides with the Bushwhackers, leaving broken bodies and burned bridges behind him.
A reckoning is coming.
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Book Two: The Fire Spreads
The Ballad of Franco Loco is the second novel in the trilogy—a descent into madness, addiction, and the brutal cost of legacy.
After the sinking of The Banshee and a failed Confederate mission, Franco Lacroix disappears into the shadows of the war. Intercepted by Murin’s agents, he's shipped to a Union prison camp in Ohio—left to rot in sickness and silence. There, addiction takes root: opium, laudanum, alcohol. A storm of painkillers used to dull the soul of a generation.
Inside those iron bars, Franco is broken. Beaten. Humbled. He meets a prison musician named Todd Sutter, whose death leaves a scar deeper than he expects. Then comes a miracle: Lt. Dan Sickles, the man who got away with everything, pulls strings to release him—thanks to covert orders from Queen Isabella working through her former General, Baldomero Espartero.
Franco escapes, only to fall again—into crime, into madness, into the hands of a Washingtonian-led reformatory ranch where a man named Samuel begins to show him another way. There is a white Camargue horse. A spiritual mirror. A girl Franco once saved, and a nurse named Elena who knows him better than he knows himself.
But redemption won’t come easy. With Jesse James at his side and Bloody Bill Anderson breathing down his neck, Franco rides into Missouri’s bloodstained woods, becoming a myth too dangerous to follow. Franco Loco is born.
This is not a war story. It’s a story about a man who drank away the truth, destroyed every gift he was given, and finally—by some strange grace—stood up one last time.
THE BALLAD OF FRANCO LOCO
Character Dossier
- Francois "Franco" Lacroix – A haunted soul chasing the truth with a bottle in one hand and a pistol in the other.
- Elena – A nurse with a secret, and the only person who remembers who Franco really is.
- Jesse James – Young, ruthless, and loyal to a fault.
- Bloody Bill Anderson – A demon in gray. Franco's reluctant commander.
- Adhemar Lacroix – A ghost from the old world. A man with a secret. A father he doesn’t know.
- Archie Clemens – A dark shadow with blood in his eyes and no lines left to cross.
- Todd Sutter – A prison camp musician whose death haunts Franco more than he can explain.
- Lt. Dan Sickles – The man who got away with everything. A wildcard sent by the Queen.
- Samuel – A former slave turned Washingtonian mentor. A man of deep faith and deeper silence.
Inspired by True History
- The Centralia Massacre and Missouri’s guerrilla war
- The real life of Bloody Bill Anderson
- The role of freedmen, nurses, and outsiders in the border states
- The Civil War’s opioid crisis and the silent epidemic of addiction
- Murin Lacroix’s secret prison operations
- The role of Queen Isabella II and her shadow network
- The Washingtonian Movement and early addiction recovery reform
- Missouri guerrilla warfare and the rise of the James Gang
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He fell hard. He rode harder. And by the time he stood, the world had already changed.
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