Cold Mountain [Paperback]

Charles Frazier's debut novel, Cold Mountain, is the story of a very long walk. In the waning months of the Civil War, a wounded Confederate veteran named Inman gets up from his hospital bed and begins the long journey back to his home in the remote hills of North Carolina. Along the way he meets rogues and outlaws, Good Samaritans and vigilantes, people who help and others who hinder, but through it all Inman's aim is true: his one goal is to return to Cold Mountain and to Ada, the woman he left behind. The object of his affection, meanwhile, has problems of her own. Raised in the rarified air of Charleston society, Ada was brought to the backwoods of Cold Mountain by her father, a preacher who came to the country for his health. Even after her father's death, Ada remains there, partly to wait for Inman, but partly because she senses her destiny lies not in the city but in the North Carolina Blue Ridge.

Cold Mountain is the story of two parallel journeys: Inman's physical trek across the American landscape and Ada's internal odyssey toward an understanding of herself. What makes Frazier's novel so satisfying is the depth of detail surrounding both journeys. Frazier based this story on family history, and in the characters of Inman and Ada he has paid a rich compliment to their historical counterparts. Cold Mountain is, quite simply, a wonderful book.

'brilliant ... The poetry in Frazier's writing is just beautiful' Doon Mackichan 'Cold Mountain is a heartbreakingly beautiful story, elegantly told and utterly convincing down to the last haunting detail' John Berendt 'Cold Mountain is a superb novel - thrilling, richly detailed and powerful. I was spellbound for two days' Frank Conroy 'This is one of the best books I've read in a long time, and I cried when it was over. It's simply a miracle' Larry Brown '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 a resonance of A Farewell to Arms' Willie Morris 'A deeply satisfying novel in the best tradition of narrative fiction' Margaret Forster 'Cold Mountain deserves any and all prizes that might be lying around' Kaye Gibbons 'This novel is so magnificent that the shadow of this book, and the joy I received in reading it, will fall over every other book I read' Rick Bass 'Charles Frazier's novel is at once spare and eloquent, a panorama that the author stills long enough to make a portrait - a very evocative portrait of Inman, a soldier who is trying to escape a ruined world. The author is interested in the scope, but also in the paradoxical smallness of war - how war shrinks our thinking and our sense of ourselves, at the same time it causes more obvious devastation. Interspersed with so many moments of sadness, the many moments of compassion seem entirely convincing and are very affecting; when Ada "wanted to tell him how she had come to be what she was", the understatement - as it is so often in Cold Mountain - is almost shattering. And then comes the ending.' Ann Beattie 'This novel's landscape is finely drawn, full of dark beauty and presentiment, and so are its characters. They give voice to a classical, peculiarly American feeling of nostalgia - the pain of returning home' New Yorker 'This is one of the best books I have ever opened, and I closed it with a regret akin to that of taking leave of a close friend... Cold Mountain is as close to a masterpiece as American writing is going to come and when readers find this book, they will love it with a sinewy and undying passion' Raleigh News and Observer 'Astonishing debut... The pleasure of Frazier's language - forceful and perfectly cadenced to capture the flavour of a long-ago era - is merely a side dish. Inman's trek and Ada's struggle to manage a small mountain farm are told in alternating chapters. As these narratives converge, their yearning for each other grows more intense, and so does our suspense. The genuinely romantic saga of Ada and Inman is a page turner that attains the status of literature' Newsweek 'Monumental novel... A remarkable effort that opens up a historical past that will enrich readers not only with its story but with its strong characters' Library Journal 'Rich in evocative physical detail and timeless human insight, this debut novel set in the Civil War era rural South considers themes both grand and intimate' Publishers Weekly 'Cold Mountain is a prose poem. Frazier delights in unfamilar words, in describing nature in its seasons and the contending forces at work in the human soul' Country Homes and Interiors 'For a first novelist, in fact for any novelist, Charles Frazier has taken on a daunting task - and has done extraordinarily well by it. In prose filled with grace notes and trenchant asides, he has reset much of the 'Odyssey' in 19th-century America, near the end of the Civil War... A wealth of finely realized supporting characters gives Frazier's novel a subtext of richness and subtlety... Yet however strongly the side issues resonate, they are never allowed to interfere with the main thrust of the plot. The author's focus is always on Ada and Inman. It is there movement toward each other that 'Cold Mountain is a heartbreakingly beautiful story, elegantly told and utterly convincing down to the last haunting detail' John Berendt 'Cold Mountain is a superb novel - thrilling, richly detailed and powerful. I was spellbound for two days' Frank Conroy 'This is one of the best books I've read in a long time, and I cried when it was over. It's simply a miracle' Larry Brown '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 a resonance of A Farewell to Arms' Willie Morris 'A deeply satisfying novel in the best tradition of narrative fiction' Margaret Forster 'Cold Mountain deserves any and all prizes that might be lying around' Kaye Gibbons 'This novel is so magnificent that the shadow of this book, and the joy I received in reading it, will fall over every other book I read' Rick Bass 'Charles Frazier's novel is at once spare and eloquent, a panorama that the author stills long enough to make a portrait - a very evocative portrait of Inman, a soldier who is trying to escape a ruined world. The author is interested in the scope, but also in the paradoxical smallness of war - how war shrinks our thinking and our sense of ourselves, at the same time it causes more obvious devastation. Interspersed with so many moments of sadness, the many moments of compassion seem entirely convincing and are very affecting; when Ada "wanted to tell him how she had come to be what she was", the understatement - as it is so often in Cold Mountain - is almost shattering. And then comes the ending.' Ann Beattie 'This novel's landscape is finely drawn, full of dark beauty and presentiment, and so are its characters. They give voice to a classical, peculiarly American feeling of nostalgia - the pain of returning home' New Yorker 'This is one of the best books I have ever opened, and I closed it with a regret akin to that of taking leave of a close friend... Cold Mountain is as close to a masterpiece as American writing is going to come and when readers find this book, they will love it with a sinewy and undying passion' Raleigh News and Observer 'Astonishing debut... The pleasure of Frazier's language - forceful and perfectly cadenced to capture the flavour of a long-ago era - is merely a side dish. Inman's trek and Ada's struggle to manage a small mountain farm are told in alternating chapters. As these narratives converge, their yearning for each other grows more intense, and so does our suspense. The genuinely romantic saga of Ada and Inman is a page turner that attains the status of literature' Newsweek 'Monumental novel... A remarkable effort that opens up a historical past that will enrich readers not only with its story but with its strong characters' Library Journal 'Rich in evocative physical detail and timeless human insight, this debut novel set in the Civil War era rural South considers themes both grand and intimate' Publishers Weekly 'Cold Mountain is a prose poem. Frazier delights in unfamilar words, in describing nature in its seasons and the contending forces at work in the human soul' Country Homes and Interiors 'For a first novelist, in fact for any novelist, Charles Frazier has taken on a daunting task - and has done extraordinarily well by it. In prose filled with grace notes and trenchant asides, he has reset much of the 'Odyssey' in 19th-century America, near the end of the Civil War... A wealth of finely realized supporting characters gives Frazier's novel a subtext of richness and subtlety... Yet however strongly the side issues resonate, they are never allowed to interfere with the main thrust of the plot. The author's focus is always on Ada and Inman. It is there movement toward each other that 'Cold Mountain is a heartbreakingly beautiful story, elegantly told and utterly convincing down to the last haunting detail' John Berendt 'Cold Mountain is a superb novel - thrilling, richly detailed and powerful. I was spellbound for two days' Frank Conroy 'This is one of the best books I've read in a long time, and I cried when it was over. It's simply a miracle' Larry Brown '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 a resonance of A Farewell to Arms' Willie Morris 'A deeply satisfying novel in the best tradition of narrative fiction' Margaret Forster 'Cold Mountain deserves any and all prizes that might be lying around' Kaye Gibbons 'This novel is so magnificent that the shadow of this book, and the joy I received in reading it, will fall over every other book I read' Rick Bass 'Charles Frazier's novel is at once spare and eloquent, a panorama that the author stills long enough to make a portrait - a very evocative portrait of Inman, a soldier who is trying to escape a ruined world. The author is interested in the scope, but also in the paradoxical smallness of war - how war shrinks our thinking and our sense of ourselves, at the same time it causes more obvious devastation. Interspersed with so many moments of sadness, the many moments of compassion seem entirely convincing and are very affecting; when Ada "wanted to tell him how she had come to be what she was", the understatement - as it is so often in Cold Mountain - is almost shattering. And then comes the ending.' Ann Beattie 'This novel's landscape is finely drawn, full of dark beauty and presentiment, and so are its characters. They give voice to a classical, peculiarly American feeling of nostalgia - the pain of returning home' New Yorker 'This is one of the best books I have ever opened, and I closed it with a regret akin to that of taking leave of a close friend... C...