Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

I didn't want to read this book. I picked it up because my daughter was required to read it prior to starting high school, and I figured I'd keep her company. And as anyone following my tweets can attest, I hated it. I cursed it for being boring, cursed the school for assigning a book that could turn kids off of reading indefinitely. The degree to which my opinion of the book has since changed is almost comical.

Cold Mountain tells the story, usually in alternating chapters, of Inman, a Confederate soldier, and the woman he loves, Ada. When the book opens, Inman is in a hospital in North Carolina, having been shot in the neck in fighting outside of Petersburg, Virginia. When he's reasonably recuperated—his wound yet a suppurating sore but no longer likely to kill him—he determines to walk home rather than return to the army, a trek that means months of hardship and could end in his being captured or shot by the Home Guard, who are on the hunt for deserters. Ada, for her part, is back home facing her own difficulties, the hard business of surviving, for which she has been woefully unprepared. The life stories of the various characters whom the two meet are woven into the narrative as well, so that the book is larger in scope than it would be if it were only focused on Inman and Ada.

A summary of the book can't possibly do it justice. In telling the small story of Inman and Ada, Cold Mountain manages to tell a much larger one: it describes the life of the average man in the South during the Civil War years, the grueling work that mere survival required. But against a miserable backdrop, the difficulties imposed by nature and by the cruelty of one's fellows, hope remains possible. And redemption.

So I'm no longer cursing Frazier's masterpiece (though I still think the early part about Inman's friendship with Swimmer would best be omitted). Nor am I cursing my daughter's assignment. In fact, I'm impressed that her school assigned a book that is not only challenging but also often indelicate. This is refreshing in a world that is so often politically correct to the point of madness.