I am a fan of Charles Frazier, having read Cold Mountain decades ago when it was first published, and then Varina just a few years ago. Thirteen Moons has been on my TBR shelf for quite a while, and I finally was able to find time to read it along with the GroupReads group True Book Talk for November.
I really hate to write synopses, so I'll just lift the one from GoodReads so you get the idea:
At the age of twelve, an orphan named Will Cooper is given a horse, a key, and a map and is sent on a journey through the uncharted wilderness of the Cherokee Nation. Will is a bound boy, obliged to run a remote Indian trading post. As he fulfills his lonesome duty, Will finds a father in Bear, a Cherokee chief, and is adopted by him and his people, developing relationships that ultimately forge Will’s character. All the while, his love of Claire, the enigmatic and captivating charge of volatile and powerful Featherstone, will forever rule Will’s heart. In a voice filled with both humor and yearning, Will tells of a lifelong search for home, the hunger for fortune and adventure, the rebuilding of a trampled culture, and above all an enduring pursuit of passion.
The novel was first published in 2006, and it spans most of the 19th century. Will loathes Andrew Jackson, who was president when he was a boy, rubs elbows with Davy Crockett, whom he admires, travels a bit in the Appalachian Mountains with John C Calhoun, sort of fights in the Civil War, and succumbs to the railroad.
Will is a great protagonist in that he has many excellent traits--courage, tenacity, loyalty--and numerous flaws and inconsistencies that make him human and believable, vulnerable and maddening.
I enjoyed reading about his life with the Native Americans and how they accepted him as a leader despite being white. I loved reading about the geography and topography, the flora and the fauna of the southern mountains while they were still Wilderness. Like any book about the Cherokees, or really any of the Native American tribes, it was heartbreaking and shame-provoking to read of their treatment by the invaders.
The writing is incredible. First-person narrative that wavers between raw and poetic. Frazier is not a prolific author, but I have two of his books still to read--Nightwoods from 2011 and set in the 1960s, and The Trackers from 2023 and set during the Depression. And, I really need to reread Cold Mountain. I sort of remember it but want a refresher.
