Review: Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lyrical and haunting historical fiction depicting the savagery of The Civil War, Cold Mountain reads like a long, miraculous poem. The author's deep knowledge of the land itself - its trees, hills, dirt, seeds, animals, weather - and his masterful storytelling, together, deliver the goods. Frazier creates a powerful rendering of the disillusionment, hardship, and unimaginable suffering all around.

Inman, an injured soldier, decides to walk away from the war and travel on foot back home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. In this Odyssey he struggles to find his way back to Ada, the woman he loves, and to Cold Mountain.  He has to fight many attacks along the way, and it is quite dangerous at times. Ada, meanwhile, has struggled to survive on her father's farm and has faced many hardships and threats from the outside, as well.

This is a book that can help one understand the scars upon our land and help one grasp the eternal anguish and regret that Civil War Americans were steeped in over those years.

On every page, the sadness of the story is mitigated by the beauty of this author's descriptions of the Southern landscape.

This is a remarkable book.

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