Thirteen Moons
by Charles Frazier
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At the age of twelve, under the Wind moon, Will is given a horse, a key, and a map, and sent alone into the Indian Nation to run a trading post as a bound boy. It is during this time that he grows into a man, learning, as he does, of the raw power it takes to create a life, to find a home. In a card game with a white Indian named Featherstone, Will wins a mysterious girl named Claire. As Will's destiny intertwines with the fate of the Cherokee Indians, including a Cherokee Chief named Bear, show more he learns how to fight and survive in the face of both nature and men, and eventually, under the Corn Tassel Moon, Will begins the fight against Washington City to preserve the Cherokee's homeland and culture. And he will come to know the truth behind his belief that only desire trumps time. show lessTags
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Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: This magnificent novel by one of America’s finest writers is the epic of one man’s remarkable journey, set in nineteenth-century America against the background of a vanishing people and a rich way of life.
At the age of twelve, under the Wind moon, Will is given a horse, a key, and a map, and sent alone into the Indian Nation to run a trading post as a bound boy. It is during this time that he grows into a man, learning, as he does, of the raw power it takes to create a life, to find a home.
In a card game with a white Indian named Featherstone, Will wins—for a brief moment—a mysterious girl named Claire, and his passion and desire for her spans this novel. As Will’s destiny intertwines show more with the fate of the Cherokee Indians—including a Cherokee Chief named Bear—he learns how to fight and survive in the face of both nature and men, and eventually, under the Corn Tassel Moon, Will begins the fight against Washington City to preserve the Cherokee’s homeland and culture. And he will come to know the truth behind his belief that “only desire trumps time.”
Brilliantly imagined, written with great power and beauty by a master of American fiction, Thirteen Moons is a stunning novel about a man’s passion for a woman, and how loss, longing and love can shape a man’s destiny over the many moons of a life.
I GOT THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LITTLE FREE LIBRARY. NOW, BACK IT GOES!
My Review: Frazier's writing, line by line, agrees with me. Lookee here at how the story starts:
It's like a ringie-dingie on the private line to my sweet spot, that kind of careful scene-setting: Man thinking about his mortal end is very much in my wheelhouse, which should surprise no one given my recent health events. Frazier's way with putting word-clothes on his thoughts doesn't get less agreeable to me:
All this in fewer than five pages!
And that's when I thought, uh-oh...I'm in danger of overload on the aperçus...which usually means the story isn't going to get the momentum going to keep the pages turning...
I fear I hit that one on the head.
Sterling stuff, I call that; agreeable to me in content, expression, and pithiness proving the writer is a clear thinker; but as a story, it all adds up to too much of a good thing and too little actually happening to keep me interested for very long at a stretch.
While that reality kept me from racing through the read, and from feeling that I'd like to pick it up every night until I'd finished it, I never once thought of abandoning ship for good. Stuff like this was my reward:
Quality writing at the expense of quality storytelling. show less
The Publisher Says: This magnificent novel by one of America’s finest writers is the epic of one man’s remarkable journey, set in nineteenth-century America against the background of a vanishing people and a rich way of life.
At the age of twelve, under the Wind moon, Will is given a horse, a key, and a map, and sent alone into the Indian Nation to run a trading post as a bound boy. It is during this time that he grows into a man, learning, as he does, of the raw power it takes to create a life, to find a home.
In a card game with a white Indian named Featherstone, Will wins—for a brief moment—a mysterious girl named Claire, and his passion and desire for her spans this novel. As Will’s destiny intertwines show more with the fate of the Cherokee Indians—including a Cherokee Chief named Bear—he learns how to fight and survive in the face of both nature and men, and eventually, under the Corn Tassel Moon, Will begins the fight against Washington City to preserve the Cherokee’s homeland and culture. And he will come to know the truth behind his belief that “only desire trumps time.”
Brilliantly imagined, written with great power and beauty by a master of American fiction, Thirteen Moons is a stunning novel about a man’s passion for a woman, and how loss, longing and love can shape a man’s destiny over the many moons of a life.
I GOT THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LITTLE FREE LIBRARY. NOW, BACK IT GOES!
My Review: Frazier's writing, line by line, agrees with me. Lookee here at how the story starts:
THERE IS NO SCATHELESS RAPTURE. LOVE AND TIME PUT ME IN THIS CONDITION. I am leaving soon enough for the Nightland, where all the ghosts of men and animals yearn to travel.
It's like a ringie-dingie on the private line to my sweet spot, that kind of careful scene-setting: Man thinking about his mortal end is very much in my wheelhouse, which should surprise no one given my recent health events. Frazier's way with putting word-clothes on his thoughts doesn't get less agreeable to me:
Survive long enough and you get to a far point in life where nothing else of particular interest is going to happen. After that, if you don’t watch out, you can spend all your time tallying your losses and gains in endless narrative. All you love has fled or been taken away. Everything fallen from you except the possibility of jolting and unforewarned memory springing out of the dark, rushing over you with the velocity of heartbreak. {Someone} walking down the hall humming an old song...or the mere fragrance of clove in spiced tea can set you weeping and howling when all you’ve been for weeks on end is numb.
All this in fewer than five pages!
And that's when I thought, uh-oh...I'm in danger of overload on the aperçus...which usually means the story isn't going to get the momentum going to keep the pages turning...
I fear I hit that one on the head.
My opinion was that if hogs are biting you so often that you have to stop and make up a specific word for it, maybe lack of vocabulary is not your most pressing problem.
–and–
What I wanted to do was slap him down a bit with wit and words. Grammar and vocabulary as a weapon. But what kind of world would it be if we all took every opportunity presented to us to assault the weak?
–and–
We all reach a point where we would like to draw a line across time and declare everything on the far side null. Shed our past life like a pair of wet and muddy trousers, just roll their heavy clinging fabric down our legs and step away. We also reach a point where we would give the rest of our withering days for the month of July in our seventeenth year. But no thread of Ariadne exists to lead us back there.
–and–
All I can say is that we are mistaken to gouge such a deep rift in history that the things old men and old women know have become so useless as to be not worth passing on to grandchildren.
Sterling stuff, I call that; agreeable to me in content, expression, and pithiness proving the writer is a clear thinker; but as a story, it all adds up to too much of a good thing and too little actually happening to keep me interested for very long at a stretch.
While that reality kept me from racing through the read, and from feeling that I'd like to pick it up every night until I'd finished it, I never once thought of abandoning ship for good. Stuff like this was my reward:
I CANNOT DECIDE WHETHER IT IS AN ILLNESS OR A SIN, THE NEED TO write things down and fix the flowing world in one rigid form. Bear believed writing dulled the spirit, stilled some holy breath. Smothered it. Words, when they’ve been captured and imprisoned on paper, become a barrier against the world, one best left unerected. Everything that happens is fluid, changeable. After they’ve passed, events are only as your memory makes them, and they shift shapes over time. Writing a thing down fixes it in place as surely as a rattlesnake skin stripped from the meat and stretched and tacked to a barn wall. Every bit as stationary, and every bit as false to the original thing. Flat and still and harmless.
–and–
In the end, {Bear} said he judged the Bible to be a sound book. Nevertheless, he wondered why the white people were not better than they are, having had it for so long. He promised that just as soon as white people achieved Christianity, he would recommend it to his own folks.
Quality writing at the expense of quality storytelling. show less
Audiobook performed by Will Patton
Frazier’s sophomore effort returns to the rural Carolina landscape, covering nearly a century from the 1820s to the very beginning of the 20th century. The tale is told by Will Cooper, who as a twelve-year-old orphan was sent into the wilderness as a “bound boy” – beholden to a serve as the lone shopkeeper of a remote Indian Trading Post in exchange for a small stipend. He was sent from his uncle’s home with a horse, a key, an old map, and his father’s knife. He is befriended by Bear, a Cherokee chief, and develops a strong relationship with the father figure.
What a marvelous story, and beautifully told. Will’s life is full of adventure and opportunities, as well as peril and mistakes. At show more the outset of his journey he begins the habit of keeping journals and it is these documents that help record his extraordinary ordinary life. At a tender age, Will falls head-over-heels in love with the enigmatic Claire, who is the powerful Featherstone’s girl. He develops skills as a trader, negotiator and entrepreneur. He reads voraciously and becomes a lawyer. He meets, and either befriends or makes enemies of, a variety of famous individuals, including Andrew Jackson and Davey Crockett. He finagles and trades and manages to kluge together quite a large parcel of land. He makes and loses and remakes several fortunes. He seeks the counsel of Bear and also of Granny Squirrel, a medicine woman who is said to be over 200 years old, and whose spells cannot be broken.
Frazier paints this time and place so vividly, I felt transported to that time. I could smell the pines, hear bacon fat sizzling in a pan, feel the chill of a winter morning or the warmth of a welcome fire, taste the delicious stews and French wines. Here are a couple of memorable passages:
I slept on the open ground and watched the enormous sky off and on between brief bouts of sleep. It was a dark night, without any moon at all and utterly cloudless. The air was dry and the stars were sharp points in the dark and there seemed to be a great many more of them than I ever remembered seeing before. And then it came to my attention that it was a night of meteor showers. Spouts and shoots of light, both thin and broad, arced overhead.
The cool damp air smelled of wet growing leaves and rotted dead leaves. A redtail hawk sat in a Fraser fir. It stared my way and shook water out of its feathers. It spread its wings and its tail, and it bowed toward me – or lunged, perhaps. I thought there was recognition in the look it gave me, and I put an arm straight into the air as a salute, for I guessed the hawk to be a representative of the mountains themselves, an ambassador charged with greeting me upon my return.
She had beautiful soft hair the color of a dove’s breast and green eyes and creamy long legs that turned under into unfortunately long narrow feet, but she had a behind with curves to break your heart. At least, they broke mine.
Will Cooper’s America is long gone but vividly brought to mind by Frazier’s skill. On finishing, I find that I want to start over again at the beginning, savoring every word.
Will Patton is fast becoming one of my favorite audiobook narrators. He does a marvelous job with Frazier’s text, bringing the many characters to life. show less
Frazier’s sophomore effort returns to the rural Carolina landscape, covering nearly a century from the 1820s to the very beginning of the 20th century. The tale is told by Will Cooper, who as a twelve-year-old orphan was sent into the wilderness as a “bound boy” – beholden to a serve as the lone shopkeeper of a remote Indian Trading Post in exchange for a small stipend. He was sent from his uncle’s home with a horse, a key, an old map, and his father’s knife. He is befriended by Bear, a Cherokee chief, and develops a strong relationship with the father figure.
What a marvelous story, and beautifully told. Will’s life is full of adventure and opportunities, as well as peril and mistakes. At show more the outset of his journey he begins the habit of keeping journals and it is these documents that help record his extraordinary ordinary life. At a tender age, Will falls head-over-heels in love with the enigmatic Claire, who is the powerful Featherstone’s girl. He develops skills as a trader, negotiator and entrepreneur. He reads voraciously and becomes a lawyer. He meets, and either befriends or makes enemies of, a variety of famous individuals, including Andrew Jackson and Davey Crockett. He finagles and trades and manages to kluge together quite a large parcel of land. He makes and loses and remakes several fortunes. He seeks the counsel of Bear and also of Granny Squirrel, a medicine woman who is said to be over 200 years old, and whose spells cannot be broken.
Frazier paints this time and place so vividly, I felt transported to that time. I could smell the pines, hear bacon fat sizzling in a pan, feel the chill of a winter morning or the warmth of a welcome fire, taste the delicious stews and French wines. Here are a couple of memorable passages:
I slept on the open ground and watched the enormous sky off and on between brief bouts of sleep. It was a dark night, without any moon at all and utterly cloudless. The air was dry and the stars were sharp points in the dark and there seemed to be a great many more of them than I ever remembered seeing before. And then it came to my attention that it was a night of meteor showers. Spouts and shoots of light, both thin and broad, arced overhead.
The cool damp air smelled of wet growing leaves and rotted dead leaves. A redtail hawk sat in a Fraser fir. It stared my way and shook water out of its feathers. It spread its wings and its tail, and it bowed toward me – or lunged, perhaps. I thought there was recognition in the look it gave me, and I put an arm straight into the air as a salute, for I guessed the hawk to be a representative of the mountains themselves, an ambassador charged with greeting me upon my return.
She had beautiful soft hair the color of a dove’s breast and green eyes and creamy long legs that turned under into unfortunately long narrow feet, but she had a behind with curves to break your heart. At least, they broke mine.
Will Cooper’s America is long gone but vividly brought to mind by Frazier’s skill. On finishing, I find that I want to start over again at the beginning, savoring every word.
Will Patton is fast becoming one of my favorite audiobook narrators. He does a marvelous job with Frazier’s text, bringing the many characters to life. show less
Charles Frazier is a master of storytelling in the tradition of those ancient storytellers who recited their lore before camp fires and in public places. I can understand why he is at home with his subject matter in Thirteen Moons, as the lives of American indians were passed in just such a manner. Will Cooper bears witness to a sad and shameful period of history, but does so without sentimentality, blame, or the shirking of blame. Will, Claire, Featherstone and Bear emerge as three-dimensional characters who fit their times and the likes of whom it would be hard to find today.
We are seldom any longer presented with a writer whose intent is to do more than tell us a story but instead to inform our lives. Frazier has literary genius. show more When the palaver of the bestseller list has faded into obscurity, I like to believe there will be an English teacher somewhere teaching this novel and its lessons to a class of rapt students. show less
We are seldom any longer presented with a writer whose intent is to do more than tell us a story but instead to inform our lives. Frazier has literary genius. show more When the palaver of the bestseller list has faded into obscurity, I like to believe there will be an English teacher somewhere teaching this novel and its lessons to a class of rapt students. show less
This book reminded me a great deal of Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, in regard to an aging narrator recounting his life in the most beautiful prose imaginable. Thirteen Moons is an absolutely phenomenal story, told by one of the most interesting and believable narrators that I have had the privilege of sharing a text with in a long while. I listened to the book on tape, and I found myself almost mesmerized by the story of Will Cooper, and his foibles and triumphs. I have always loved Indian stories, but this one seemed so real, and no account of Indian peoples I have ever read has seemed so realistic. I love the way that the narrator is so transparent about his life, and I also love his (Charles Frazier's really) command of the show more language. Some of the lines made me want to weep. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading an epic tale of love, loss, and the displacement of a nation. show less
There’s a lot to like in ‘Thirteen Moons’. First, probably, is the incredible job Frazier does in describing the hardwood forest environment of the Cherokee Territory that encompassed 140,000 square miles over land that later became parts of North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. When Will Cooper rides through this wild and beautiful landscape, the reader is right there with him, whether admiring it or struggling to survive in it.
Frazier also uses vocabulary that may have the reader searching through obscure word lists – the first sentence of the book declares that “there is no scatheless rapture” – but which continually conjures believable vocabulary and language usage of the post-Revolutionary, show more pre-Western expansion period of U.S. history.
And the background upon which he has placed this fictional memoir is one of the saddest and perhaps most misunderstood events in the clashes between European settlers and the native inhabitants – the dissolution of the Cherokee Territory and the forced relocation of its inhabitants to what eventually became Oklahoma, along the Trail of Tears (which Frazier accurately renders as “the trail where they cried”. Like any vibrant and living culture, that of the Cherokee was not monolithic. There were multiple factions and wildly varying responses to the nascent United States’ demands; while Frazier doesn’t go into great detail (the book would have been 1400 pages instead of 400 if he had done so), he spends enough time on it to get the job done. The job being to portray the attempts of his main character to help his adopted clan stay in their ancestral home.
Less satisfying is the character development of two of the main characters in the book – Claire, the woman Will loves, and the morally ambiguous Featherstone, whose presence in Claire’s life makes the budding romance between her and Will tenuous at best and impossible at worst. The problem is that we really never quite understand why Will seems to continue to respect Featherstone; why he doesn’t take what would appear to be the logical action when their conflict erupts into the open. Nor are we ever made privy to the reasons Claire keeps walking away from Will,
These problems keep the book from being truly remarkable; even with them, it is a rich and satisfying read. show less
Frazier also uses vocabulary that may have the reader searching through obscure word lists – the first sentence of the book declares that “there is no scatheless rapture” – but which continually conjures believable vocabulary and language usage of the post-Revolutionary, show more pre-Western expansion period of U.S. history.
And the background upon which he has placed this fictional memoir is one of the saddest and perhaps most misunderstood events in the clashes between European settlers and the native inhabitants – the dissolution of the Cherokee Territory and the forced relocation of its inhabitants to what eventually became Oklahoma, along the Trail of Tears (which Frazier accurately renders as “the trail where they cried”. Like any vibrant and living culture, that of the Cherokee was not monolithic. There were multiple factions and wildly varying responses to the nascent United States’ demands; while Frazier doesn’t go into great detail (the book would have been 1400 pages instead of 400 if he had done so), he spends enough time on it to get the job done. The job being to portray the attempts of his main character to help his adopted clan stay in their ancestral home.
Less satisfying is the character development of two of the main characters in the book – Claire, the woman Will loves, and the morally ambiguous Featherstone, whose presence in Claire’s life makes the budding romance between her and Will tenuous at best and impossible at worst. The problem is that we really never quite understand why Will seems to continue to respect Featherstone; why he doesn’t take what would appear to be the logical action when their conflict erupts into the open. Nor are we ever made privy to the reasons Claire keeps walking away from Will,
These problems keep the book from being truly remarkable; even with them, it is a rich and satisfying read. show less
Unlike many of the other reviewers, I haven't read Cold Mountain; this is my first encounter with Charles Frazier.
There is a lot about this book that I liked. The writing is great -- almost poetic at times, ironical at others -- the writing conveyed the mood of the scenes so well. I felt very moved by the stories about the Removal. The author created a sharp sense of time and place.
The story was interesting, telling the life story of Will Cooper, an orphan bound to a merchant who is adopted by an Indian tribe. Will becomes a lawyer and a politician, as well as a leader in the Indian tribe. He has one great love -- Claire -- and that story is captivating.
My only criticism is that I found it hard to really identify with Will, and show more though the book was a big long as a result. show less
There is a lot about this book that I liked. The writing is great -- almost poetic at times, ironical at others -- the writing conveyed the mood of the scenes so well. I felt very moved by the stories about the Removal. The author created a sharp sense of time and place.
The story was interesting, telling the life story of Will Cooper, an orphan bound to a merchant who is adopted by an Indian tribe. Will becomes a lawyer and a politician, as well as a leader in the Indian tribe. He has one great love -- Claire -- and that story is captivating.
My only criticism is that I found it hard to really identify with Will, and show more though the book was a big long as a result. show less
Very satisfying. I don't read a whole lot of historical fiction, but my father had actually recommended this to me, and I put a lot of stock in his good opinion. I was not disappointed. Frazier has a detailed yet personal style that suits the historical (which is an obvious point, considering the awards that 'Cold Mountain' won), and here he has composed a first-person narrative that not only supports the level of detail, but also manages to be witty, quick, and compelling. Those who have turned away from truly well-researched historical fiction because some authors have a tendency to let the story get bogged down in the research may find that Frazier is a worthy second chance -- he seems to have achieved a balance that others struggle show more with. Frazier is careful, in his acknowledgments, to remind the reader that his work is fiction, that it is not a biography of William Thomas (a real historical figure who did many of the things that Frazier's fictional narrator, Will Cooper, does for the Cherokee people in the novel), but the level of realism and, in fact, historical truth (which was verified by my father, who has read and researched more on the Cherokee than anyone I know) is never the less impressive. What's more, this is just a good story. There is adventure, love lost and gained and (sort of spoiler) lost again, friendship, life and death struggles, and all the ups and downs that a good yarn should have. There are a few questions of pacing -- after the detail of the first two-thirds, the last part of the book seems a little too skimpy, though there is a logical reason for the skips that are made -- but overall this is a well-constructed narrative and an enjoyable (not quick and fluffy, but genuinely enjoyable the way a good cup of really hot tea is enjoyable) read. show less
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- Canonical title
- Thirteen Moons
- Original publication date
- 2006-10-03
- People/Characters
- Will Cooper; Bear; Featherstone; Claire
- Dedication
- For Charles O. Frazier and William F. Beal, Jr.
- First words
- There is no scatheless rapture.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)In the end, just a fading rumble coming from down the river and black smoke settling over everything before the mountains form up again, shorn and damaged and eternal.
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