Cold Mountain

Here’s another book-to-movie entrant on the list. This book follows the exploits of a Confederate soldier who makes his way home to the mountains of North Carolina. It’s like the Odyssey—he has a series of memorable encounters and run-ins along his journey, and things are not as they seem when he eventually returns home. I love the novel's tension and the artfully crafted characters.

I was completely entranced by the earthy and elegant language of the characters, which drew me into the dirt and blood of the Civil War. Until reading the book, I had no idea of the personal pain generated by this great political conflict.

The landscape of Western North Carolina completely entranced me, as did the love story at the heart of the novel. Images from the book continue to haunt me years after I finished it.

When Inman decides he’s had enough of the Civil War, he takes a very long walk home. Along his path, he encounters the detritus of the conflict in shattered land and people. Meanwhile, his love, Ada, tries to cobble together some remnants of her former life.

Maybe a book out of fashion these days because it’s set in the defeated South, and that I understand. However, it remains a masterclass in style, vision, plot, and insight. 

Cold Mountain tells the tale of two people separated and ultimately drawn inexorably together by the American Civil War in the 1860s.

We follow Inman, a wounded soldier, as he abandons the battlefield to make his way across the war-torn country to Cold Mountain, where his love Ada lives. She is trying to scratch a living from her dead father’s farm in terrible conditions.

The whole story is written in exquisite style, with the narrative moving forward as one stays still while the other slowly moves towards their joint goal of being together once more. Get those tissues ready for… show more.

Cold Mountain chronicles the “odyssey” of W.P. Inman, a deserter of the Confederate army from a hospital near Raleigh to his fiancée, Ada, who lives on a farm in a rural mountain community in North Carolina. 

Although the story of Inman’s adventurous journey is filled with moments of human kindness, I felt even more connected to the storyline about the unlikely friendship between the sophisticated Ada, who is out of her depth on the mountain farm, and the homeless but resourceful Ruby, who joins Ada’s household, clarifying, “Money’s not it… I’m saying if I’m to help you here, it’s with… show more.

Cold Mountain is one of the best of all Civil War novels, if it can be described as that; there are no battles of armies in the book, there is the Confederate deserter Inman, making his way home, in a hostile land,  to his beloved, Ada Monroe. He will get there, finally, but there is no peace here, either. Cold Mountain is an epic adventure story, and a tale of true love.  

The classic Civil War novel, Cold Mountain, is a beautiful but harrowing account of lives mangled in the crucible of war. I walked in the shoes of Inman, a soldier, going back to his home and sweetheart. He carries a serious wound in his neck but deeper damage to his conscience due to the violent acts that the war has compelled him to commit. His true love at home, Ada, has also been stripped bare by the war but is rebuilding her life with the help of Ruby, a brave waif who teaches Ada practical skills. From this book… show more.

Frazier’s book, a serious novel rather than a potboiler, set during and after the American Civil War, nevertheless leaped onto the bestseller lists, then went on to win a National Book Award. Why? Reading the book is a profound experience. You are seamlessly taken back to the middle of the 19th century and engaged with characters whose poignant stories penetrate a reader’s heart. It’s both an adventure and a love story about a soldier on a fraught journey home and his lover’s story as she lives her own life close to the earth in a time before modern conveniences… show more.

Cold Mountain tells two intertwined stories, often in alternating chapters: one narrative strand follows W. P. Inman, a wounded Confederate veteran who walks home to the North Carolina mountains; the second narrative follows the wartime life of Inman’s beloved Ada Monroe. In this way, the novel portrays both life in the army and life on the home front—equally desperate realities. The novel also studies the war through both masculine and feminine lenses. It is based in part on Homer’s Odyssey and is indeed epic in scope. Cold Mountain has remained an incredibly popular novel and was the basis for the… show more.

For recent U.S. wars such as Vietnam or Iraq, there’s a considerable body of work both fiction and nonfiction that focuses on the travails of soldiers after the fighting ends. But this is a Civil War-era novel about coming home. It follows a Confederate deserter who leaves a Virginia hospital and sets out for his North Carolina farm. At times heart-breaking, at times uproariously funny, Cold Mountain addresses the weight of war, and the way that survivors are burdened with wounds both physical and psychological.