Book #7: Thirteen Moons

Title: Thirteen Moons


Author: Charles Frazier


First of all, I was totally astounded to see this book on the new releases shelf when I was browsing in the library a few weeks ago. It's one of the most-anticipated works of fiction in the last decade, the second novel by the author of Cold Mountain which had me sobbing in my pillow when I read it for the first time way back in college. If we were still in Minnesota, my name would be on the waiting list for a good six months at the library before I'd get a hot title like this in my hands. Here in our little suburb, I was even able to renew it without anyone else placing a hold on it.


I've got to say that I haven't been overly impressed with the literacy of the people here. I mean, they can read and all, but most people just don't. I don't think I've ever lived in a ward where more of the women had not only college degrees, but graduate degrees, but it's like pulling teeth to get them to come out to book group. But it's not just the ward, it seems like the town in general is not a book-loving place. For one thing, there are over 80,000 people living in my little suburb, and not one bookstore. My best bet for a good read is the book section at Target, which is pretty pathetic. Our library is just one big room-- a far cry from the state-of-the-art library in Rochester, which was a similarly sized town. I can get pretty much any book I want through interlibrary loan, which is a good thing, but I'd really like to be in a place where I felt like other people were engaging with literature and I had people to talk to about it.


Anyway, I'm stepping off my soapbox to say that I wasn't disappointed by my decade-long wait for Thirteen Moons. Like Cold Mountain, much of it takes place in the rugged mountains of western North Carolina, only in this case the story centers on Will Cooper, a boy sold into indentured servitude to run a trading post for Cherokee indians. He grows up and becomes a lawyer and lobbyist and landowner, and tries to protect the group of Cherokee he grew up with from the evacuation and exodus to the west. The character of Will is loosely based on William Holland Thomas, who was also a self-taught lawyer, and also fought against Andrew Jackson's policy to move the Cherokee into Oklahoma.


If there are such things as girl books and boy books (and we all know there are), Thirteen Moons falls more into the category of a boy book. Unlike Cold Mountain, the reader doesn't get a female perspective in the novel. We see Will's love interest through his eyes only. It's not a love story in the same way that Cold Mountain was-- instead it reminds me more of a James Fenimore Cooper novel. Cooper is an old-school western hero, who by the end of the novel has survived his own larger-than-life reputation by a few decades longer than he would have liked.


--originally published 3/22/07