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Cold Mountain

by Charles Frazier

May 1998

Synopsis

Cold Mountain"Based on local history and family stories passed down by the author's great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded soldier, Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war and back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. Inman's odyssey through the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada's struggle to revive her father's farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman and Ada confront the vastly transformed world they've been delivered.

Charles Frazier reveals marked insight into man's relationship to the land and the dangers of solitude. He also shares with the great nineteenth-century novelists a keen observation of a society undergoing change. Cold Mountain recreates a world gone by that speaks eloquently to our time." (Publisher)

Reviews

  • "Cold Mountain is the best Civil War novel since Michael Shaara's 'The Killer Angels'. Written in a style equal to that of Shelby Foote, this novel deserves any and all prizes that might be lying about." (Kaye Gibbons)
  • "This novel is so magnificent -- in every conceivable aspect, and others previously unimagined -- that it has occurred to me that the shadows of this book, and the joy I received in reading it, will reach far over every other book I ever read. It seems even possible to never want to read another book, so wonderful is this one. Cold Mountain is one of the great accomplishments in America." (Rick Bass)
  • "Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is the most impressive and enthralling first novel I have read in a long time. It is a magnetic story, ambitious in scope, with richly developed characters and beautiful evocations of landscape. Though set in an earlier time, it is contemporary in the profoundest sense, with resonance of 'A Farewell to Arms'." (Willie Morris)

Book Club Rating and Comments

If you or your book club has read this book and would like to share your comments, please email us at upthecreekbc@yahoo.com.

Other Books by Charles Frazier

  • (none)