I'd been wanting to read this book for years, and now that I'm done, I'm sorry to say that I was disappointed. However, the concept for the novel is great. Cold Mountain is the story of Inman, an injured soldier fighting for the South in the Civil War, and Ada, his somewhat girlfriend who has lost her father and must learn to fend for herself before the coming winter. Inman decides to desert the Confederates, who by now are obviously going to lose the war, and head home to Ada. Ada is befriended by a rough woman named Ruby who knows everything there is to know about farming, clearing land, and preparing the house and land for winter so that Ada can survive. The POV shifts from Ada to Inman throughout the chapters. Inman meets interesting and comical people throughout his travels. At the end of the novel, Ada and Inman finally meet after spending four years apart, only to suffer the realities of war and life in the end.
On the positive side, I thought the writing of this novel was very beautiful, almost poetic. Charles Frazier obviously put a lot of research into this book, not just in the setting, but in the dialogue, the clothing the characters wore, their mannerisms, what they ate, everything was very true to the times. However, the book definitely dragged, and I really wasn't ever intrigued until the end in the final action sequence.
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