Wednesday’s Worthwhile Readings: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
So I thought I would share some of my favorite reads with you on a regular basis and, in thinking about some of my most cherished tales, I recalled one I read during my college days. Yes, it’s been about 8 years, but I still remember and adore this one. In my contemporary fiction class, we were assigned to read Cold Mountain. This Civil War era novel is told from two characters’ points of view that rotate every other chapter: Inman (a Confederate soldier) and Ada (a preacher’s daughter). I thought this alternating point of view kept the story interesting and the pace fast. In the book, Inman and Ada meet and fall in love right before Inman leaves for the war. Inman, who becomes seriously injured and consequently deserts the war, sets out on a dangerous and lonely odyssey to get home to his love, Ada. Along his way, he meets a variety of interesting people, some friendly and some enemies, but all of them help push Inman closer to home.
Ada, who has little experience in farming, is forced to manage the family farm after her father dies suddenly. Luckily, she has friends that help her as she overcomes multiple obstacles, from learning to care for farm animals to avoiding the Home Guard patrol, who go way beyond their duties of finding deserters to terrorizing anyone and everyone in the community. All along, Ada knows in her heart that Inman will come back to her because she sees a vision in her neighbors’ well that shows her so. There’s a sort of magical, supernatural quality to the whole story.
It’s like reading Homer’s Odyssey, except with more romance, more interesting characters, and better settings.
You will fall in love with the variety of characters, the scenery that Frazier paints, and Inman and Ada’s love story. You will feel heartbroken at the tragedy of not only the war, but the terrible loss of the characters’ loved ones, sense of security, and way of life. Sorry for the language in this quote, but Ada’s friend Ruby perfectly describes war when she says, “Every piece of this is man’s bullshit. They call this war “a cloud over the land” but they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say “Shit, it’s rainin’!” Love it! I can just hear Renée Zellweger shouting this right now from the movie.
It is dramatic, romantic, and even hard to read in some graphic scenes, but definitely worth the read. One of my favorite quotes in the book shows the tragic aftermath of war. At the end of the novel Ada says,”What we have lost will never be returned to us. The land will not heal – too much blood. All we can do is learn from the past and make peace with it.” Isn’t this true of so many things that have happened in our nation’s past or in our own past, for that matter?
On another note, if you enjoyed the book, I think you will adore the movie. It came out in 2003 and has Jude Law and Nicole Kidman as Inman and Ada. It is one of those movies that definitely does the book justice. Warning: There are several very graphic scenes, but Inman and Ada may make you swoon.
