man who was instrumental in the support of Genereal Robert E Lee.
He was not perfect and the incident at Fort Pillow will reveal but he
thought he was doing the right thing at the time. This book is rich in
history and you will learn a great deal about the battles in the south and
the man himself. I highly recommend reading this book.
Cold Mountain
Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain has quickly established itself as a
must-read. Everyone is talking about this eloquent and ambitious first
novel; word-of-mouth recommendations and dust jacket blurbs, even
serious literary reviews are trembling beneath the weight of the half-
forgotten superlatives that have been dusted off and pressed into
service for this book. I must admit to redlining the adjectivometer a bit
myself while singing its praises. Frazier's astonishing fiction debut is a
literary page-turner -- an utterly compelling story driven by rhythmic,
resonant prose and convincing historical detail.
Cold Mountain is the story of Inman, a wounded and soul-sick
Confederate soldier who, like his literary fellow-traveler Odysseus,
has quit the field of battle only to find the way home littered with
impediments and prowled by adversaries. Inman's Penelope is Ada, a
headstrong belle who has forsaken her place in Charleston society in
order to accompany her father -- a tubercular southern gentleman
turned missionary -- to a new home in the healthy mountain air of
North Carolina. Frazier divides the narrative between Inman's
homeward progress and Ada's struggle to make it on her own after
her father dies, establishing an underlying tension that is at once subtle
and irresistible.
Inman is critically wounded in the fighting outside Petersburg and,
after a rough triage, he is "classed among the dying and put on a cot
to do so." When his body stubbornly refuses to comply, he is
evacuated further south to a hospital where he may succumb at his
leisure. But against all odds, Inman's terrible injury insists upon healing
itself. During the long months of convalescence he struggles to shed
the hated, insulating numbness put on against the carnage he has seen
-- Malvern Hill, Sharpsburg, Petersburg, Fredericksburg -- and
probes his psychic wounds for the shrapnel of his former self. He
finds instead a refuge in the "topography of home in his head" and the
Cherokee folk tales of his childhood friend Swimmer:
"As Inman sat brooding and pining for his lost self, one of Swimmer's
creekside stories rushed into his memory with great urgency and
attractiveness. Swimmer claimed that above the blue vault of heaven
there was a forest inhabited by a celestial race. Men could not go
there to stay and live, but in that high land the dead spirit could be
reborn.
"Though Inman could not recall whether Swimmer had told him what
else might be involved in reaching that healing realm, Cold Mountain
nevertheless soared in his mind as a place where all his scattered
forces might gather. Inman did not consider himself to be a
superstitious person, but he did believe that there is a world invisible
to us. He no longer thought of that world as heaven, nor did he still
think that we get to go there when we die. Those teachings had been
burned away. But he could not abide by a universe composed only of
what he could see, especially when it was so frequently foul. So he
held to the idea of another world, a better place, and he figured he
might as well consider Cold Mountain to be the location of it as
anywhere."
Knowing that he will soon be deemed fit to return to active duty,
Inman decides it is time to see if his "better place" still exists. He
gathers what provisions he has been able to hoard, readies his
fearsome LeMats revolver -- a double-barreled affair capable of
firing nine .40 caliber rounds as well as a single load of shot -- slips
out of the hospital under the cover of darkness, and begins the long
walk home.
Meanwhile, Ada is reeling from her own mortal blow. The death of
her father has left her penniless and alone, without the slightest idea of
how she will survive. Though "educated beyond the point considered
wise for females," she now finds that her vaunted talents -- a deft
hand at the piano and a literary turn of mind -- have little value in the
wartime barter economy of the rural South. The well-meaning
members of her father's former congregation fully expect Ada to sell
out and return to Charleston, but the prospect of begging charity or
entering into some "mildly disguised parasitic relationship" with distant
kin disgusts her. Salvation arrives in the form of Ruby Thewes, a
solitary young mountain woman who teaches Ada the basic tenets of
self-reliance and a Tolstoyan reverence for physical labor. "Simply
living had never struck Ada as such a tiresome business" -- but her
exertions give her a pride in her land and an ease with herself that she
has never known.
Inman's lowland odyssey is fraught with peril. He travels mostly at
night to avoid the Home Guard -- brutal vigilante bands who patrol
the highways for runaway slaves and deserting "outliers" -- but
encounters a strange assortment of misfits nonetheless: Veasey, the
defrocked preacher and would-be "pistoleer" who appoints Inman his
personal confessor; Odell, once heir to a Georgia planter, doomed to
wander the southland in search of his slave lover; Junior, a noisome
and treacherous hillbilly; and a wise old goatwoman who gives him a
glimpse of God's mercy.
Time and again Frazier addresses the mysteries of faith and
redemption. Though the war has ravaged the countryside and broken
its people in body and in spirit, salvation -- admittedly, salvation of a
humanist sort -- is always possible for those who dare to ask it. Even
Ruby's long-lost father, Stobrod, a wastrel who has spent the majority
of his life occupied in either the manufacture or the consumption of
moonshine, is born again through his music. As in Goethe's dictum,
"der weg ist das ziel," the seeking is in itself the path to finding
redemption. Those who make the journey -- physically or spiritually
-- ultimately find comfort; those who do not live a hell on earth.
A book as assured and as satisfying as Cold Mountain is a cause for
celebration, and a first novel of this caliber (David Guterson's Snow
Falling on Cedars comes to mind) is exceptional indeed. Charles
Frazier has made an auspicious debut.
—Greg Marrs
From the Publisher
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.
Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, and Renee
Zelweggar opening Christmas Day
across the country. Should be good.
Read the book first, you will get the
whole story.
Cold Mountain - available now!