Cold Mountain

Inman, a wounded soldier, walks away from the front during the Civil War to return to his prewar sweetheart, Ada, who desperately works to revive a struggling farm.

National Book Award Prize for Fiction (National Book Foundation) Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction (The Academy of Arts and Letters) "Charles Frazier has taken on a daunting task--and has done extraordinarily well by it... a Whitmanesque foray into America: into its hugeness, its freshness, its scope and its soul." --James Polk, The New York Times Book Review "Charles Frazier's feeling for the Southern landscape is reverential and beautifully composed. He has written an astonishing first novel." --Alfred Kazin, The New York Review of Books "An astonishing debut . . . The genuinely romantic saga of Ada and Inman is a page turner that attains the status of literature." --Malcolm Jones, Newsweek "A richly rewarding first novel . . . Wonderfully convincing, finely detailed." --Christian Science Monitor "Strikingly beautiful . . . In its vivid evocation of a time and place, its steady storytelling momentum, and its unabashed affirmation of a fiction that takes moral choice seriously, Cold Mountain calls to mind Snow Falling on Cedars." --Newsday "A great read--a stirring Civil War tale told with epic sweep [and] loaded with vivid historical detail." --People "As close to a masterpiece as American writing is going to come these days." --Fred Chappell, Raleigh News & Observer "This novel's landscape is finely drawn, full of dark beauty and presentiment, and so are its characters." --The New Yorker "Measured and graceful . . . savor it. You'll find the characters living in your head for a long time." --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "An exciting work of fiction." --The Washington Post Book World "A rare and extraordinary book . . . heart-stopping . . . spellbinding." --San Francisco Chronicle "A haunting, beautifully written tale." --Deirdre Donahue, USA Today "Deserves all the literary prizes that might be lying about." --Kaye Gibbons "The novel is above all a sustained flight of the imagination."--Daily Telegraph "Cold Mountain offers compelling glimpses into the surreal horrors of [the Civil War]. . . . Inman's gripping odyssey alternates with the story of princess-turned-pauper Ada. . . . Civil War buffs, old-time music devotees and love-story suckers--there's something in this book for everyone" --Beth Macy, The Roanoke Times "Frazier's spare prose is rich in detail and nuance and never misses a beat in evoking the Civil War-era South. . . . Open this book to any page and you will find a description, simile, metaphor or word choice to take you breath away." --Eva Ciabattoni, Los Altos Town Crier "[A] spectacular book. . . . About loneliness and isolation and reaching out." --Ann Klaiman, The Salida Mountain Mail "A remarkable first novel, a romance of love, of friendship, of family, of land. Frazier has inhaled the spirit of the age and breathes it into the reader's being."--Erica Wager, The Times (London) "Heartbreakingly beautiful . . . elegantly told and convincing down to the last haunting detail." --John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil "A superb novel--thrilling, richly detailed and powerful. I was spellbound." --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, author of Father and Son "A parallel narrative: Inman is seriously injured at the end of the Civil War and begins a dangerous journey home, and Ada has struggled to learn firsthand how to keep alive on her family farm. A beautifully written love story, with much to discuss." --Robin Powers, St. Helens Book Shop, St. Helens, OR, Book Sense quote "A beautiful book, written in exquisite prose." --Kate Atkinson "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 resonance of A Farewell to Arms." --Willie Morris "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. 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 is so magnificent--in every conceivable aspect, and others previously unimagined--that it has occurred to me that the shadow of this book, and the joy I received in reading it, will fall over every other book I ever read. It seems even more possible to never want to read another book, so wonderful is this one. Cold Mountain is one of the great accomplishments in American literature." --Rick Bass