Cold Mountain

Charles Frazier—biography

• Born in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1950, Frazier grew up in Andrews and Franklin, NC.

• He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1973, earned an M. A. from Appalachian State University in 1973, and received his Ph.D. in English, American literature, from the University of South Carolina in 1986.

• Frazier taught English, first at University of Colorado, Boulder, then at North Carolina State University, until his wife Katherine (married 1976) convinced him to quit and work full-time on his novel.

Charles Frazier—biography

• His friend and fellow North Carolina novelist, Kaye Gibbons, presented his unfinished novel to her literary agency.

• And this was Cold Mountain, his first novel, published in 1997 by Atlantic Monthly Press.

• The novel is based on the family story of his great-great uncle, William P. Inman, a wounded confederate soldier who journeyed home, back to Cold Mountain and his family, during the war.

• In 1985, he had published a trail guide to the Andes and environs for the Sierra Club.

Charles Frazier—biography

• Cold Mountain won numerous awards, including the National Book Award for Fiction (1997), topping the New York Times Best Seller list for over a year.

• In 2003, the film based on the book was released to critical acclaim, winning seven Academy Award nominations and an Oscar for Renee Zellweger as Best Supporting Actress. The film starred Jude Law and Nicole Kidman.

• Random House picked up the option on Frazier’s second book, Thirteen Moons, an historical novel that tells a complex story associated with the Cherokee Removal and its aftermath, the Native Americans who remained in Appalachia, and their struggle against a newly-minted and highly racist American government. This New York Times Best Seller and award-winning book is a bildungsroman or coming of age story.

Charles Frazier—biography

• Frazier grew up near the Cherokee community of Snowbird, North Carolina, which still had a Cherokee-speaking population. He told the story from the point of view of "a fictionalized William Holland Thomas (Will Cooper in the novel), a white boy who was adopted by the Cherokee chief, Bear."

• The novel brings together both this dramatic part of Cherokee and American history and the Civil War and its aftermath. The book was later translated into Cherokee, and Frazier worked with Cherokee elders and scholars to bring authenticity to that project.

Charles Frazier—biography

• In 2008, Frazier won the North Carolina Award for Literature.

• In 2011, he published the literary thriller Nightwoods, set in the 1960s, also an award-winning New York Times bestseller.

• Today, Frazier and his wife split their time between their horse farm in central Florida and Asheville, North Carolina.

• Frazier is currently finishing his fourth novel, inspired by the life of Varina Howell Davis, the second wife of Jefferson Davis.

• Charles Frazier is the 18th recipient of the Appalachian Heritage Writer’s Award, the 2016 writer in residence award at Shepard University.

• That site provides multiple links: https://www.shepherd.edu/ahwirweb/frazier/links

Charles Frazier—publications

• Cold Mountain (1997)

• Thirteen Moons (2006)

• Nightwoods (2011)

• Varina (2018)—based on the life of Varina Davis, First Lady of the Confederate States of America, second wife of Jefferson Davis

Charles Frazier—interviews

• Charlie Rose Interview

https://charlierose.com/videos/14233

• YouTube videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSuqYx3wxTc

• On Nightwoods

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-tHhPqgxfE

Cast of characters

• W. P. Inman

  • One of the two protagonists in the story, the novel begins with Inman in the hospital with a neck wound sustained in the battle of Fredericksburg. Despite medical opinion, he begins to heal and leaves the hospital to once again find Black Cove and Cold Mountain and Ada. The novel is his epic journey.

  • He survives the multiple, varied challenges that the journey presents and continues, despite temptations to abandon the trek. In today's terms, he has PTSD from the trauma of war, bad dreams, flashbacks, which he hopes his return to Ada will vanquish. He grapples throughout with the need to kill, the morality of war. Although he's deserted, his personal war continues because he's tracked and threatened by Teague and the Home Guard. By the end, he's ready to put aside his past and start a new life with Ada, tragically cut short.

  • The real W. P. Inman is in fact Frazier's great great uncle.

Cast of characters

• Ada Monroe

  • The other main character in Cold Mountain, Ada is a wealthy, educated, somewhat spoiled young woman. When Ada’s father, Monroe, moves from Charleston to Black Cove, Ada catches the eye of Inman, and the two begin a romance, cut short by the war.

  • After her father dies, Ada must take care of herself but knows nothing about the practicalities of living off the land. She's on the verge of returning to Charleston when Ruby arrives, sent by Mrs. Swanger, and makes a deal to teach her and help manage the farm. The two develop a strong friendship.

  • Like Inman, Ada has flashbacks to her time before the war, her life in Charleston. By the end of the book, she's a different woman from the girl at the beginning.

  • When Inman returns, she looks forward to bringing him into the life she has created at Black Cove. She's heartbroken when he's killed, but continues to farm and rear their daughter.

Cast of characters

• Reverend Monroe, Ada's father

  • Ada's father is a charismatic preacher who leaves Charleston for the fresh air of Cold Mountain because of his health. He has raised Ada as a lady, with books, music, and art. He's somewhat over-protective, the only man in Ada's life, and only parent.

  • He dies early in the novel so we know him primarily in flashbacks, but do discover that he married Claire Dechutes, Ada's mother, late in life although he courted her when she was only 16.

  • His death marks the true beginning of Ada’s story in the novel; in his absence, Ada must learn to take care of herself.

Cast of characters

• Ruby Thewes, daughter of Stobrod, and Ada's opposite. One academic reviewer referred to Ruby and Ada as Scarlett and Melanie.

• Unlike Ada, Ruby has a poor relationship with her father; she’s been taking care of herself since she was a little girl.

• She's fiercely independent, practical, knowledgeable about the world, and farming. She teaches Ada how to plow, farm, and generally run the homestead, but as a partner rather than a slave or hired hand. As time passes, it's clear Ruby and Ada are friends as well. By the epilogue, ten years later, Ruby is still living with Ada and has three children with Reid.

Cast of characters

• Stobrod Thewes—Ruby's father. In the vernacular of the times, a "ne'er do well" father who abandons his child. He's also a thief and a gambler, but as Ruby admits, he never hit her.

• A complex character, he's both likable and despicable, comic and serious.

• When the war began, he left to fight, but deserted and returned to Black Cove, looking for shelter from Ruby and Ada Monroe. The novel suggests that he may be beginning to redeem himself by playing the fiddle, with his companion Pangle on the banjo. And like Inman, he's hunted by Teague.

• As Ada acknowledges, Stobrod’s example proves that any man can change, provided they have the will to do so.

• A "stob" is a broken branch

Cast of characters

• The Swangers

  • Ada’s closest neighbors and friends. They oppose the war, although both sons are off fighting.

  • Deeply religious, the couple was offended by Monroe’s assumptions when he first arrived at Cold Mountain that they did not know the Bible. In an important, neighborly gesture, Sally sends Ruby to help out at the farm after realizing that Ada intends to run it herself.

  • The Swangers represent the goodness and quiet endurance of people who have successfully made a life in these mountains.

Characters Inman meets along the journey

• Sara, 18-year-old widow, with baby

  • Along his journey, another wayfarer, Potts, tells Inman to find Sara who will give him food and shelter. She does, as well as clothes that belonged to her husband John, killed in the war.

  • She's eager to help Inman because she's lonely and has no one to help her. After she feeds him, gives him clothes, and an opportunity to wash up and shave, she asks him to lie in bed with her. She tells him the story of her husband John, cries, and falls asleep.

  • During the night, raiders or Home Guards come looking for money. Inman slips out the back, into the woods. They torment Sara, and endanger her child, until convinced she has no money. So they steal the hog, the only thing to keep her alive during the coming winter.

  • Inman tracks them, kills the robbers, and returns the hog.

Characters Inman meets along the journey

• Old woman with the caravan

  • Further into the novel, Inman is wounded by the Home Guard and finds an old woman who takes him in.

  • She’s calm, knowledgeable, and seemingly completely comfortable living a solitary life, as she has for 26 years since leaving her husband.

  • She keeps journals, recording the natural world around her in detail. But she also engages Inman in conversation when he stays with her, suggesting that she still craves some human contact.

  • She kills a goat and cooks it, makes cheese, and gives Inman powerful herb medicines that help him recover quickly and return to his journey back to Black Cove.

Characters Inman meets along the journey

• Solomon Veasey

  • A dimwitted, immoral preacher whom Inman meets early in his travels. Veasey is literally dragging a drugged young woman (Laura Foster) down the road, with murderous intentions because she's pregnant as a result of their affair. He's been chased out of town. Inman ties him to a tree, returns the woman to her home.

  • A little later, Veasy joins Inman, much to Inman’s annoyance, when they encounter Junior, a strange, vile man, and his wife Lila.

  • Ultimately, Veasey is found by the Home Guard and killed, while Inman escapes.

Characters Inman meets along the journey

• Teague

  • The purported leader of the Home Guard, Teague is arguably the novel's primary antagonist. Although they are supposed to capture and return deserters and thereby strengthen Confederate troops, they have in fact deserted military service by serving in this capacity.

  • Teague is mean, sadistic and cruel; he toys with his victims before arresting or killing them. He makes Pangle cover his face with his hat because he's smiling, then shoots him.

  • Interesting that the novel includes almost no good, loyal Confederate soldiers, or Federals, for that matter. The soldiers tend to be either deserters like Inman or bullies like Teague, and on occasion, scared youth.

Characters Inman meets along the journey

• • Swimmer

    • He never actually appears in the novel, but is a Cherokee Indian that Inman met in his youth. Inman recalls days spent with Swimmer, and other Indians, playing games, eating, drinking.

    • He also recalls Swimmer's tales about gateways to an invisible spirit world found atop high mountains.

Bartram's Travels

• • From the beginning of the novel, Inman carries with him a copy of Bartram's Travels. Full title is Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida.

  • William Bartram was an American botanist, ornithologist, natural historian, and explorer who travelled the southern British colonies in North America from 1773–1777. He's been described as "the first naturalist who penetrated the dense tropical forests of Florida.

  • He wrote in detail about his travels, including Native Americans and the natural phenomena of a specific region. Inman is traveling where Bartram traveled, therefore this book is relevant.

Homer's Odyssey

• The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer and one of the oldest extant works of literature still read by contemporary audiences. Divided into 24 books, as is Homer's other epic, the Iliad, this poem follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, on his journey home after the Trojan War.

• After the war itself, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted an additional 10 years, during which he encountered many perils and his crew mates were killed.

• In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to manage a group of unruly suitors competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.

• Crucial themes in the poem include the ideas of wandering, of testing, and omens.

Homer's Odyssey

• Scholars still reflect on the narrative significance of certain groups in the poem, such as women and slaves, who have a more prominent role in the epic than in many other works of ancient literature.

• This focus is especially remarkable when considered beside the Iliad, which focuses on the exploits of soldiers and kings during the Trojan War.

• Broadly speaking, male authors follow the decisive victories, heroes, turning-point events. Women writers focus on the everyday consequences. See The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah.

Questions for discussion

• This is a two-plot novel structure, with chapters that alternate between Ada and Inman. We've seen this before, with The Alice Network, for example, that shifts between Charlie's narrative and Eve's.

• Inman's story is episodic; his journey from the Civil War and the hospital to Cold Mountain, Black Cove, and Ada is the narrative thread that ties together the episodes and people he meets along the way. His narrative life is clearly a journey.

• Would it be fair to say that Ada is following a similar episodic journey throughout the novel?

• Why has Frazier chosen this structure?

Questions for discussion

• In the interview with Charlie Rose, Frazier remarks on the letters and journals he used in his research for this novel. Particularly, he commented on the women writers who wrote letters and kept journals.

• Frazier said that at the beginning of the war, these women were asking their husbands to make decisions about, for example, selling the cow. By the end of the war, they had sufficient confidence to make the decision themselves and simply tell him that the cow had been sold.

• So what's Frazier's depiction of women? In addition to Ada and Ruby, consider the women Inman meets along the way.

• Does the fact that both Ada and Ruby grew up "motherless" affect their development?

Questions for discussion

• Tales and memories feature prominently in the novel as characters frequently call to mind their past lives. Does Frazier adopt an attitude similar to Faulkner's that the past is ever present?

• Discuss why what has previously occurred plays such an important role in shaping the novel’s plot structure and development.

Questions for discussion

• At the end of the novel, when Inman has found Ada, they talked and he went off to sleep. Ada thinks:

• And then she thought that you went on living one day after another, and in time you were somebody else, your previous self only like a close relative, a sister or brother, with whom you shared a past. But a different person, a separate life. Certainly neither she nor Inman were the people they had been the last time they were together. And she believed maybe she liked them both better now.

Questions for discussion

• Inman has been wounded in battle, witnessed incredible carnage, and inflicted some of it himself. As a result, he deserted the army, and the hospital, to return home. Yet he uses violence, he even kills people, along the way.

• What's his position on violence, and the Civil War?

Questions for discussion

• What's the significance of omens, portents, signs, superstitions in this novel? What do dreams mean? Inman frequently dreams after intense experiences.

Questions for discussion

• The chapter titles in this novel are noteworthy. For some, the phrase appears in that chapter with more significance than the words would seem to indicate initially. They can indicate the mood of the character or an important message for the character.

• Several chapter titles refer to song lyrics. Several others mention colors: "The Color of Despair" (Chapter 3), "Ashes of Roses" (Chapter 6), and "Black Bark in Winter" (Chapter 17).

• Finally, there is the beautiful symmetry of the first and last chapters sharing a similar symbol: "The Shadow of a Crow" (Chapter 1) and "Spirits of Crows, Dancing" (Chapter 20).

Questions for discussion

• What does music mean in this novel?

Breakout room question

• This is a complicated, dense, literary novel. What does it mean? What do you come away with after reading it?