Cold Mountain
A Novel
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4.2 • 246 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In 1997, Charles Frazier’s debut novel Cold Mountain made publishing history when it sailed to the top of The New York Times best-seller list for sixty-one weeks, won numerous literary awards, including the National Book Award, and went on to sell over three million copies. Now, the beloved American epic returns, reissued by Grove Press to coincide with the publication of Frazier’s eagerly-anticipated second novel, Thirteen Moons. Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves. His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign. At the same time, the intrepid Ada is trying to revive her father’s derelict farm and learning to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away. As it interweaves their stories, Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic odyssey, hugely powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Charles Frazier’s tale of love and survival against the backdrop of the Civil War is a soul-shaking experience. As the bloody conflict is reaching its end, seriously wounded Confederate soldier Inman sets off on foot to return to his beloved Ada on Cold Mountain. Meanwhile, Ada herself is on the verge of starvation until she partners with a passing stranger named Ruby, who shares her knowledge of how to live off the land. We love how Frazier’s sweeping novel shifts between the sweethearts’ stories, showing how they’ve both been altered by hardship. We found ourselves desperate for Inman to make it home and be reunited with Ada. Frazier crafts exquisite descriptions of Cold Mountain’s majestic plants, animals, and insects, expertly contrasting the horror of war with nature’s enduring beauty. Fans of historical fiction and romantic novels will enjoy this poignant read about love and resilience.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rich in evocative physical detail and timeless human insight, this debut novel set in the Civil War era rural South considers themes both grand (humanity's place in nature) and intimate (a love affair transformed by the war) as a wounded soldier makes his way home to the highlands of North Carolina and to his prewar sweetheart. Shot in the neck during fighting at Petersburg, Inman was not expected to survive. After regaining the strength to walk, he begins his dangerous odyssey. Just as the traumas of life on the battlefront have changed Inman, the war's new social and economic conditions have left their mark on Ada. With the death of her father and loss of income from his investments, Ada can no longer remain a pampered Charleston lady but must eke out a living from her father's farm in the Cold Mountain community, where she is an outsider. Frazier vividly depicts the rough and varied terrain of Inman's travels and the colorful characters he meets, all the while avoiding Federal raiders and the equally brutal Home Guard. The sweeping cycle of Inman's homeward journey is deftly balanced by Ada's growing sense of herself and her connection to the natural world around the farm. In a leisurely, literate narrative, Frazier shows how lives of soldiers and of civilians alike deepen and are transformed as a direct consequence of the war's tragedy. There is quiet drama in the tensions that unfold as Inman and Ada come ever closer to reunion, yet farther from their former selves. BOMC and QPB selections; paperback rights to Vintage; rights sold in Germany, the U.K. and France; film rights sold to Lynne Pleshette. FYI: Frazier's great-great-grandfather was the source of this story about a Civil War soldier who deserted and walked home.
Customer Reviews
Must Read!!!
A must read, especially if one waits a spell only to read it again. Finding myself in the actual hollers and hills of Cold Mountain, the thrice reading of this odyssey was immensely rich with reward. Surrounded by the true structure of Fraizer’s natural characters, gifted a deeper wrenching clarity and thrill - though also sharpened the flint arrows of pain, loss and need to move on in life despite the depth of scars. Frazier’s poetic supremacy and powerful storylines are first in class. Narrative bliss!!
More Confederate Apologetics
Very well-written but it’s clear where the author’s sympathies lie. The ubiquitous racism of the Confederacy is toned down in favor of either painting a picture of both sides being equally bad or portraying “the Federals” as nameless, foolish brutes just lusting to be slaughtered by the courageous, genteel men of the south. The pre-war years of terror and aggression by the pro-slavery states against the anti-slavery ones is ignored, as is the Confederacy launching the war; the Federals are invading for no reason other than perhaps plunder, robbing black as well as white.
No amount of flowery prose can cover the rotting corpse of neo-Confederate tradition; this cadaver needed to be buried a century-and-a-half ago. Most of our country’s problems still stem from the fact that the Confederates were never seriously punished for their crimes. What was needed was something like a thorough process of de-Nazification of the former pro-slavery states, but what we got instead was the Klan, Crow…and Cold Mountain.
Beautiful
This book is great. It is a modern version of the old book "The Odyssey", Captivating from start to finish!!