By Paul Palazzolo
Before Cold Mountain went to the big screen this past December, the novel written by Charles Frazier was known as the story that took the nation by storm when it was on top of the New York Times’ Best-seller List for 45 weeks by May 1998. Cold Mountain, Frazier’s premiere novel that took five years to write, also captured the National Book Award in November 1997.
Dr. Frazier is a native of Ashville, North Carolina and is a one-time American literary professor at UNC Ashville. Frazier has read from many different sources about the Civil War before writing his first novel including The Aftermath of Fredericksburg, Winter Conditions and A Literary Message. The research Dr. Frazier conducted and his familiarity with the settings in the novel transcended his writing into an outstanding novel that has an abundant amount of the scenery description and the happenings going on in and out of Inman’s world.
Set during the fall of 1864 along the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina, the novel commences with the protagonist Inman, an injured Civil War solider who has an unstable young life, is in a hospital along with many other injured victims of the Civil War. During his stint in the hospital, Inman figures out that the causes for the Confederates fighting isn’t personally worth fighting for his life. Inman runs away from the hospital to find his love Ada. Ada moved from Charleston to a farm on the Appalachian Trail with her dad in 1858 in order to relieve her dad from consumption. Ada becomes friends with Ruby, a slave who runs away from her master and drifts along the Appalachian Trail. Ada teaches Ruby how to work on a farm efficiently and both women work together to revive it.
Throughout Inman’s odyssey, he meets several people who are grotesque. The devastation that they encounter during the war cause them to live abnormally. These people include a pastor without a church, a hermit of twenty-six years, a runaway, an engaged couple and a widow whose husband died in the line of duty. Inman is chased by the Home Guard, a “band of Federals” who imprison, murder and dig a mass grave for Confederate men in order to help out the Unions win the war. After an encounter with the Home Guard, Inman develops a strategy to stay away from the Home Guard and to return to Ada’s farm.
Cold Mountain is different than many Civil War era novels. This novel digs deep inside Inman, Ada and Ruby by exploring their character, including their strengths, weaknesses and dreams. The grotesque people who Inman meet along the way show the consequences of the Civil War. The day-by-day life that Frazier describes is much better than any Civil War novel that features the soldiers and the war itself. The conclusion would be shocking for those who have not viewed the movie. However it ends the novel with closure for Ada and Inman. For those who have viewed the screenplay, the novel would give a much better showing of the characters and go more in-depth of Inman’s odyssey. Even though Cold Mountain is not legendary, it sure left its mark in American literature during the 1990s and launched Charles Frazier into the limelight.