Charles Frazier: Cold Mountain

Well, they made a movie out of it so it can't be that bad. That was NOT my first thought when I began reading Cold Mountain. It was actually on the reading list at the university so I had to read it to pass the exam ;-)
Well, it is a civil war story and you may think like the guy in Sunset Boulevard when he talked about Gone with the Wind who would want a civil war story?
The point is if you don't like civil war stories you're probably gonna love this.
The book is about two lovers who he in the war and she at home suddenly have to survive under dire circumstances. And it's not about heroes. It's about a young man - Inman - who suddenly had to be a soldier and whose main motive for deserting from the army is to get home. And you have a young woman - Ada - who though she is a stranger in the valley - she moved there with her father - has gotten to think of her father's farm as home and doesn't want to leave there when he dies though she knows nothing about farming.
Inman journeys back to Cold Mountain where Ada together with a poor girl named Ruby a few years younger than she is struggles to survive the winter and keep the farm going.
Ada learns in the progress a lot not only about farming, but about independence and survival. And about friendship as well, because Ruby and Ada are as different as they can be, but in the end they are very close and Ruby learns almost as much from Ada as Ada from Ruby.
Inman's journey on the other hand journeys back home and meets all sorts of strange people on the way almost like in a fairy-tale though while they sometimes seem very far off they are strikingly real at the same moment and sometimes you almost forget the danger of Inman being caught over the beautiful way Frazier tells his story.
What makes the book so unforgettable and to one of the most beautiful things I've ever read is the way Frazier describes the landscape. You can see the beautiful valley with the mountain looming over it as clearly as if you had just been there and it's one of the most wonderful things you have ever seen. The landscape and the way it's described bears so much emotion you almost want to cry. The landscape becomes a mirror for both Inman's and Ada's soul and it's overflowing with their sadness as well as their happy memories.
I suppose there was no possibility for a completely happy ending in this book. It would have destroyed the credibility the characters have. But the sad ending is so beautiful up in the mountains were reality and ancient tales and lore finally become one that this has for quite a long time been the first book that had me actually crying.