Charles Frazier
United States
Patient, richly physical prose, alert to terrain, hunger, and craft, that never lets a wartime journey home feel less than mythic.
Frazier grew up in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, earned a doctorate in American literature, and taught college English before turning, in his forties, to the debut novel that made him famous nearly overnight.
Cold Mountain (1997) follows Inman, a wounded Confederate deserter walking home across a war-ravaged Appalachia in a journey deliberately modeled on Homer's Odyssey, alternating his trek with Ada Monroe's parallel struggle to keep his family's mountain farm alive; it won the National Book Award in 1997 and became a massive bestseller.
The novel's success let him leave teaching for fiction full time, and he has continued writing historical novels rooted in the same Appalachian terrain, including Thirteen Moons and Varina.
Lines of influence
No descendants recorded, yet.
Their books in the atlas
- 1997
Cold MountainLvl 4war novel
Meanwhile, elsewhere
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