I first reviewed Frazier's "Cold Mountain" in 1997, before it won the National Book Award. Considering the phenomenal success of this novel, I felt it warranted revisiting.
"Cold Mountain's" long reign on all the bestsellers' lists is neither a fluke nor a gamble. Just as Morgan Entrekin of Grove/Atlantic says, "When you finish it, you can't not talk to someone about it."
This Civil War novel differs from anything I've ever read on the subject. There are no strutting generals, no famous heroes, no glorious victories regaled.
Instead, Frazier gives us a story that could easily be about our own great-great grandfathers, grandmothers, and uncles. This is a tale of common folk caught up in a war that forever alters, or foreshortens their lives.
Frazier spent six years writing "Cold Mountain," his first novel. He took as his protagonist a man named after his own great-great uncle Inman. The real Inman, like his fictionalized namesake, after being wounded at Petersburg abandoned the Confederacy's lost cause.
Inman was one of the fortunate ones. He was plucked off the battlefield and taken to a hospital. One night, long before dawn, he dressed himself, strapped on his carefully assembled packs and went to the tall open window and looked out.
"It was the dark of the new moon. Ribbons of fog moved low on the ground though the sky was clear overhead. He set his foot on the sill and stepped out the window."
Thus, began one man's perilous journey: a harrowing trek "through the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South." Inman's odyssey would, if fortune smiled on him, take him back to his home in Cold Mountain, and to Ada, the sweetheart he'd left behind.
Frazier deftly transitions into Ada's story in the second chapter. Thereafter, he interweaves her struggles to maintain her father's farm with Inman's own heroic efforts to survive.
Ada reminded me of one of my own great-great grandmothers left alone with three young daughters, on a hard-scrabble homestead, while her husband rode off to war, never to return. Ada, like my ancestor, was born into a once well-to-do family. She was trained to a highborn life, educated in literature and music and social graces. After Ada's father, Monroe, died of a heart attack it was left to Ada to live out the war anyway possible.
Without the help of Ruby, a young woman whose survival skills originated from deprivation and parental abandonment, Ada would have lost the farm and possibly starved to death. Ruby becomes Ada's mentor and her source of strength for four arduous years. Together, they overcome even the ruthless Home Guards who are anything but honorable men.
The author shows us a slice of Americana not found in history books. He does it using the strange, intriguing vernacular of the hill folk of North Carolina, and with a style that dares to break most of the rules of novel writing. Frazier's voice is clear and as haunting as his original similes and metaphors.
"The mountains stood gray in the dusk, as pale and insubstantial as breath blown on glass."
I can think of only one word that aptly sums up Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain." That word is "Stunning!"
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(Jones is a published writer & literary critic)
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