![]() (Ada specifically tells us her name is pronounced with a short, not long, vowel sound. His loss of innocence and experience of evil mean he can never gain re-entrance to paradise. But it's also a failed return to Eden after all, Odysseus makes it back to Penelope and Ithaca while Inman, poor boy, is out. Cold Mountain is usually tied to Odysseus and his journey home. The story involves two related strands of plot: Inman, wounded during a Civil War battle, makes his way home to Cold Mountain and to his love, Ada Monroe Ada, in the meantime, struggles to cultivate her failing farmland. Sadly, the book never reached the sales potential Random House had expected. Reportedly, Frazier was offered a whopping $8 million advance for Thirteen Moons.Although the actual Cold Mountain exists, the town after which it is named in the novel is entirely fictional. Frazier grew up not far from the mountain he immortalized in Cold Mountain in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina.In 2011 Frazier published Nightwoods, the story of a young woman living alone in the Appalachians who takes on the care of her murdered sisters young children, traumatized, violent and mute. In this dangerous environment, Will learns to empathize with the Cherokees, who open his mind to a much broader world than he had ever seen before. With only a horse, a key, and a map, the boy is prodded into Indian country with the mission of running a trading post. While Thirteen Moons returns to a 19th century setting, 12-year old Will is quite a different protagonist from Inman. Nearly ten years after the publication of Cold Mountain, Frazier published Thirteen Moons. The novel ultimately won the coveted National Book Award for fiction and was adapted into an Oscar-winning motion picture starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and best supporting actress Renee Zellweger. Winning countless laudatory reviews from publications throughout the nation, Cold Mountain also became a must-read commercial smash. Much to his disbelief, Frazier's novel went on to become the smash sensation of the late-‘90s. When Frazier was only half finished with the book, he passed it along to friend and novelist Kaye Gibbons (Ellen Foster A Virtuous Woman), who then got it into the hands of her agent. ![]() Frazier cleverly divides the narrative between Inman's trek and Ada's story as she struggles to make due in the wake of her father's death and the absence of her love. Along the way, he is confronted by various obstacles, but he journeys on valiantly, regardless. In Cold Mountain, Inman is a wounded confederate soldier who abandons the war to venture home to his beloved Ada. For six or seven years, he toiled away on the story that would ultimately become Cold Mountain, and with the novel's publication in 1997, the first-time author had a modern classic of American literature on his hands. Slowly, a gripping tale of devotion, faith, redemption, and love coalesced in Frazier's mind. He also looked toward the legendary epic poem The Odyssey for inspiration. Bits of the life of Frazier's grandfather, who also fought in the Civil War, helped flesh out the journey of William Pinkney Inman. The specifics of Inman's history were sketchy, indeed, but Frazier's father spun his tale with such enticing drama that Frazier began filling in the gaps, himself. Inman was a confederate soldier during the Civil War who took a harrowing foot-journey from the ravaged battle fields back to his home in the mountains of North Carolina. Frazier published Thirteen Moons.įrazier had been teaching University-level literature part-time when he first became spellbound by the story of his great-great uncle W. Cold Mountain, his highly acclaimed first novel, was an international bestseller, and won the National Book Award in 1997. Currently-lives in Raleigh, North CarolinaĬharles Frazier grew up in the mountains of North Carolina.Awards-National Book Award for Fiction, 1997.M.A., Ph.D., Appalachian State University Education-B.A., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.Cold Mountain recreates a world gone by that speaks eloquently to our time. He also shares with the great nineteenth-century novelists a keen observation of a society undergoing change. 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.Ĭharles Frazier reveals marked insight into man's relationship to the land and the dangers of solitude. 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. 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.
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