Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is the most impressive and enthralling first novel I have read in a long time. It is a magnetic story, ambitious in scope, with richly developed characters and beautiful evocations of landscape. Though set in an earlier time, it is contemporary in the profoundest sense, with a resonance of A Farewell to Arms.

A soldier wounded'in the Civil War,Inman turns his back on the carnage of the battlefield and begins the treacherous journey home to Cold Mountain, and to Add, the woman he loved before the war began.

As Inman attempts to make his way across the mountains, througb the devastated landscape of a soon-to-be-defeated South, Add struggles to make a living from the land her once-wealthy father left when he died. Neither knows if the other is still alive.

COLD MOUNTAIN is an Odyssean voyage,encompassing all the human tragedy and waste of war, and a powerful love story. Moving and uplifting, brilliantlv written and utterly comapelling, Charles Frazier's first novel is a classic story made fresh by a spectacular talent.