Charles Frazier’s Claptrap of a Novel

Since he won the National Book Award for his enthralling debut, Cold Mountain, Frazier’s work has been a bit of a mixed bag. Thirteen Moons, Frazier’s 2006 follow-up to Cold Mountain, is a riveting account of Will Cooper, an orphan who is sold off by his adoptive parents to run a trading post in the hills of the Cherokee Nation. He buys his freedom, falls in love with the mysterious Claire, and finds himself battling both the federal government (on behalf of the Cherokee) and Claire’s husband, Featherstone—a violent man, who rises from petty horse thief to plantation owner. It’s a novel about suffering and how people often "die in ignorance and delusion." Almost nothing in life, Frazier writes, "is epic or tragic at the moment of its enactment. History in the making, at least on the personal level, is almost exclusively pathetic."