The recent resurgence in historical fiction arguably dates from the critical and popular success of North Carolinian Charles Frazier's memorable first novel, Cold Mountain. A romantic epic in the classic mold, this richly detailed sag of a Civil War deserter's homeward odyssey won the 1997 National Book Award and inspired a haunting 2003 feature film.
Classical precedent likewise informs and shapes Frazier's long-awaited second novel, in which a rootless an restless protagonist, like Cold Mountain's embattled hero, Inman, expends the energies of a long lifetime seeking permanent reunion with the only woman he'll ever love, who love shim in return yet moves in and out of his yearning orbit during the decades they are apart, but never entirely trusts him nor can bring herself to share his patchwork experience.
Like the beleaguered heroes of the books that are his lifelong sustenance, he's a visionary fixated on an ever-receding ideal: the noble knight Lancelot, cursed and burdened by his own divided and enervated loyalties.
She is Claire Featherstone, the ethereally beautiful young wife of a "white" (i.e. half-breed) Indian who prospers as a landowners and patriarch in the Cherokee Nation that stretches westward from the Carolinas to Oklahoma.
He is Will Cooper, an orphan and "bound boy" sold by his relatives to an "antique gentleman" who places adolescent Will in a moribund trading post on the edge of "the (Cherokee) Nation"--from which humble beginning he earns a vast fortune, bonds closely with his Cherokee neighbors and mentors (his conflicted friendship with the mercurial Featherstone overshadowed by his filial devotion to the equally prominent chief known as Bear), studies law and represents "his people" against the repressive policies of Indian-hating President Andrew Jackson, becomes a state senator and an itinerant buffer between the red men's and white men's worlds, all the while pursuing the memory, the dream and the promise of the elusive Claire.
Thirteen Moons brings this vanished world thrillingly to life, retelling the agonizing stories of "the Removal" (of Indians from their ancestral lands) and the lie of "Reconstruction"; creating literally dozens of heart-stopping word pictures (e.g. autumns display "a few stunted pumpkins still glowing in the fields an a few persistent apples hanging red in the skeletal orchards"); building unforgettable characterizations of the sorrow-laden everyman Will (whom we first, then finally, glimpse as a reclusive anachronism, weathered by "a near century of living"), unpredictable Featherstone and stoical Beat (a character Faulkner might have created), Claire who belongs to no man, ancient medicine woman Granny Squirrel, and all the uprooted and dispossessed souls enduring "the days and nights, the thirteen moons" of each accumulating year, while making their final journey "to the Nightland".
One of the great Native American--and American--stories, and a great gift to all of us, from one of our very best writers.
Mr. Frazier recounts Will’s melancholy adventures with plenty of narrative brio, giving the reader a succession of suspenseful -- and in some cases touching -- set pieces: the young Will venturing out into the wilderness for the first time, armed only with a sketchy map and a few provisions; Will facing off in a duel with Claire’s sadistic guardian, Featherstone; Will and Bear deciding to hunt down a group of their own people (who have killed some government soldiers) to win permission to stay on their land.
The New York Times
When Frazier's debut Cold Mountain blossomed into a National Book Award-winning bestseller with four million copies in print, expectations for the follow-up rose almost immediately. A decade later, the good news is that Frazier's storytelling prowess doesn't falter in this sophomore effort, a bountiful literary panorama again set primarily in North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains. The story takes place mostly before the Civil War this time, and it is epic in scope. With pristine prose that's often wry, Frazier brings a rough-and-tumble pioneer past magnificently to life, indicts America with painful bluntness for the betrayal of its native people and recounts a romance rife with sadness.
In a departure from Cold Mountain's Inman, Will Cooper narrates his own story in retrospect, beginning with his days as an orphaned, literate "bound boy" who is dispatched to run a musty trading post at the edge of the Cherokee Nation. Nearly nine mesmerizing decades later, Will is an eccentric elder of great accomplishments and gargantuan failures, perched cantankerously on his front porch taking potshots at passenger trains rumbling across his property (he owns "quite a few" shares of the railroad). Over the years, Will -- modeled very loosely, Frazier acknowledges, on real-life frontiersman William Holland Thomas -- becomes a prosperous merchant, a self-taught lawyer and a state senator; he's adopted by a Cherokee elder and later leads the clan as a white Indian chief; he bears terrible witness to the 1838-1839 Trail of Tears; a quarter-century later, he goes to battle for the Confederacy as a self-anointed colonel, leading a mostly Indian force with a "legion of lawyers and bookkeepers and shop clerks" as officers; as time passes, his life intersects with such figures as Davy Crockett, Sen. John C. Calhoun and President Andrew Jackson.
After the Civil War, Will fritters away a fortune through wanderlust, neglect and unquenched longing for his one true love, Claire, a girl he won in a card game when they were both 12, wooed for two erotic summers in his teen years and found again several decades later. In the novel's wistful coda, recalling Claire's voice inflicts "flesh wounds of memory, painful but inconclusive"-a voice that an uncertain old Will hears in the static hiss when he answers his newfangled phone in the book's opening pages. The history that Frazier hauntingly unwinds through Will is as melodic as it is melancholy, but the sublime love story is the narrative's true heart. (Starred Review)
If Frazier modeled Cold Mountainon The Odyssey, his template for Thirteen Moonscould well be Little Big Man, as a very old man tells tall tales about his life with American Indians. Indentured at 12 and sent to Cherokee territory to run a trading post, Will Cooper gets more or less adopted by Bear, a Cherokee chief who maintains the old ways, and Featherstone, the owner of a slave-supported plantation. Will also falls hard and permanently for Claire, who drifts in and out of his life over the years. He takes to the law and tries to defend Cherokees from the land grabs that culminated in the Trail of Tears. His tales are mostly fascinating, and the insights into the period priceless. Reader Will Patton sounds too young to portray the ancient Cooper, but much of the book concerns his youthful adventures. If the novel gradually becomes less adventuresome and bogs down in mundane legal complications, well, so do many real lives. If not the home run that Cold Mountainwas, Thirteen Moonsis at least a stand-up double and one of the more entertaining novels of the year. Libraries will want to have it.
John Hiett
"Gorgeous…Thirteen Moons calls Cold Mountain to mind in its wonder at the natural world; its pacificist undercurrents; its dismay at the dismantling of what matters, and its convication that one love, no matter how tortured and inexplicable, can be life-defining…fascinating…vivid and alive."
–Newsweek
"Thirteen Moons brings this vanished world thrillingly to life… One of the great Native American, and American stories, and a great gift to all of us, from one of our very best writers."
–Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"There are things so masterful words can’t do them justice. Frazier’s writing falls in that category…With Thirteen Moons, he’s doing important work filling in the gaps, helping restore the roots, of our knowledge of our own history."
–Asheville Citizen-Times
"Fascinating…Reading Thirteen Moons is an intoxicating experience…This is 21st-century literary fiction at its very best."
–BookPage
"Thirteen Moons is rare in many ways and occupies a literary plane of such height that reviewing it is not really salient….Thirteen Moons has the power to inspire great performances from succeeding generations of writers….For those who simply value the literary experience, Thirteen Moons will provide the immense satisfaction of taking a literary journey of magnitude. Whether on a plane, in an office or curled in a window seat, readers who absorb Will's story will find their own lives enriched….Thirteen Moons belongs to the ages."
–Los Angeles Times
"Magical…the history lesson in Thirteen Moons is fascinating and moving…You will find much to admire and savor in Thirteen Moons."
–USA Today
"Verdict: A powerhouse second act….a brilliant success…Frazier's second act should convince everyone that he's here to stay. It is a powerful, dramatic, often surprising and memorable novel."
–Atlanta Journal Constitution
"Thirteen Moons is a boisterous, confident novel that draws from the epic tradition... Frazier is a natural storyteller, and throughout his picaresque tale are grand themes and eulogies"
–Boston Globe
"Warm hearted…Frazier is a remarkably meticulous and tasteful writer… Thirteen Moons is a worthy successor to the first novel and a highly readable book."
–Seattle Times
"To Charles Frazier, words are playthings. Like very few other contemporary American novelists, he puts them together in such a way that they can transform an otherwise mundane moment, scene or conversation into one that is transcendent….No sophomore jinx here. Reading a Frazier novel is like listening to a fine symphony. He's a maestro whose pen is his baton, beckoning the best that each sentence has to offer. And just as you wouldn't rush a conductor, you should take the time to savor Frazier’s work, to take in each thought, to relish the turn of phrase or the imagery of a craftsman."
–Denver Post
"Two for two…Here is a book brimming with vivid, adventurous incident…Charles Frazier set himself a daunting challenge with this book. He set out to write a historical novel that was retrospective and meditative, yet still vibrant and immediate with life. Thirteen Moons succeeds in classy fashion."
–Raleigh News & Observer
"If current fiction is anything to go by, it’s hard for a novelist to make Santayana's puzzle pieces - lyricism, comedy, tragedy - fit together, as they do in real life and real history. Frazier has done it…Thirteen Moons makes you feel that change that happened so long before our own time, and makes you mourn it."
–Newsday
"Thirteen Moons is a fitting successor to Cold Mountain…fans of Frazier's debut will be cheered to discover that the new book is another compulsively readable work of historical fiction."
–St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"If there is any doubt that Frazier is an incredibly gifted storyteller - and not just a lucky name or a one-hit wonder - it will be put to rest with the publication of Thirteen Moons. Within 10 pages, this long-awaited new novel bears the reader swiftly out of the waking world into its own imagined universe like nothing else published this year."
–Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Forget the sophomore jinx. Frazier demonstrates that Cold Mountain was no one-hit wonder with this fully realized historical novel again set in the South….Again, Frazier shows himself a master of landscape and language, both often fresh and surprising in his telling."
–Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"Thirteen Moons contains achingly beautiful passages of snowfalls, fog-wrapped rivers and moonlit forests. There are ribald and hilarious events, too, including a description of the Cherokee Booger Dance that is a masterpiece of satire. The love affair between Cooper and Claire threads its way through this pseudo-historic epic like a brilliant, scarlet ribbon. There is also a melancholy refrain that celebrates a wondrous time and place that is gone and will never return."
–Smoky Mountain News
"Fiction of the highest order…Another indelible character. Charles Frazier has a knack for them."
–Charlotte Observer
"What a story!... Frazier's creation, Will Cooper, is utterly charismatic….Frazier's genius lies in his ability to convey emotions that feel pure and genuine…It was worth the wait."
–Dayton Daily News
THIRTEEN MOONS is a triumph. With a voice filled with nuance and grit, Will Patton is the perfect choice to recount the story of Cooper, from the age of 12, when he sets off to run a remote Indian trading post by himself, to his final years as an elderly statesman. Patton effectively portrays the characters Cooper meets along the way: Claire, his beloved; Featherstone, her husband; and Bear, the Cherokee chief who adopts Will and sets him on the path to protect family land and the Cherokee way of life. Acoustic guitar and fiddle signal chapter breaks and set the tone. Frazier’s prose and Patton’s narration are perfectly matched. D.J.P. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine