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.
He did just that time and time again in his remarkable first novel, “Cold Mountain” (a National Book Award-winner with more than 4 million copies printed), and does it again with his new work of historical fiction, “13 Moons.” 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.
With Frazier, the story plays second fiddle to the writing, but doesn’t suffer because of it. In “Cold Mountain,” the Civil War was the backdrop, providing the impetus for the action and the angst of its two major characters, Inman and Ada, two tragic lovers. He goes further back in time in “13 Moons,” using the relocation of the Cherokee Indians as its springboard.
Central to the story is Will Cooper, who is sent to the edge of the Cherokee Nation while just a lad of 12 years. He is given a horse and a map and told that as a bound boy, he is to run a trading post there. What follows, told in retrospect from Will’s point of view as a dying old man in his ninth decade of life, is a story of a lifetime spent among the Indians who take him in as one of their own and of a quest to reunite with Claire Featherstone, first the girl, then the woman – literally – of his dreams.
Will is a self-educated businessman, politician, lawyer, literati and traveler. All through his long life, he is more content on horseback traveling among the mountains, riverbeds and coves of the Cherokee Nation than at his home. When Washington, under President Andrew Jackson, decides it is time to take the Cherokee off their land and move them farther west to make room for more white settlement, Will goes to the nation’s capital to plead the Indian’s case. In Gumpian fashion, he meets John C. Calhoun, Davy Crockett and Jackson himself to advance his arguments.
As the years go by and the relocation begins to take place, Will devises a plan, along with a Cherokee chief named Bear, to buy vast tracts of land for his adopted people. When the Civil War comes, Will, as a middle-aged and well-heeled man, becomes a colonel and takes a “legion” of men into the field, where he tries his best to avoid any fighting.
After the war, Will manages to lose his fortune, only to make another when the railroad comes through his land. As his time draws near to its end, he sits on his porch and peppers passing trains with birdshot.
Will’s connection with Claire permeates his life, even though that connection is mostly in his thoughts and dreams.
But the beauty of Frazier’s storytelling is in the telling. In “13 Moons,” we are given the details of life in the wilderness in the early 19th century, its sounds and smells and tastes – even its recreation.
It is Will’s insights into the vagaries of life and his wry sense of humor that propel the narrative and, of course, it’s the writing, always the writing.
Here are some brief samples from “13 Moons”:
“… I held Claire, and that was forever. Something was sealed. Desire abides. It is all people have that stands proof against time. Everything else rots.”
“But almost nothing in life is epic or tragic at the moment of its enactment. History in the making … is almost exclusively pathetic. People suffer and die in ignorance and delusion.”
“I walked down the main street. In the afternoon light the clapboard buildings and the muddy street and muddy sidewalks looked antique. The little mountain town, though, was so recently settled that the cemetery held only an unlucky few markers rising off-plumb from long grass, like death was an idea that had failed to catch on.”
“On especially bad days, fog lay so thick in the valley that I could not see the poplar trees growing on the riverbanks, though I could hear the flow of water, rushing against the rocks. And then wind would drive the fog off the river and up the cove, and rain fell heaving and sloping, streaking the air like dirty twine.”
“Grief is not a thing that can be convincingly shared with an audience. Our worst pain is confined within our own skin.”
“She seemed full and complete. Though the rational, unenraptured part of me figured that no one, man or woman, gets to be full and complete ever. We all go about burdened with the reality that we are the broken-off ends of true people. It is the severe vengeance Creation takes on us for living.”
“You’re left with nothing but your moods and your memory. Pitiful and powerful tools.”
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13 Moons
By Charles Frazier
Random House, 432 pages, $26.95
