As Cold Mountain is one of my all time favorite books, it’s been easy for me to dismiss Charles Frazier as a one hit wonder. In a fit of bias against
sophomore attempts, I barely gave his Thirteen Moons a second glance.
Well, I just finished Nightwoods, Frazier’s third work of fiction, and can tell you that it stands quite well on its own. Don’t compare it to Cold Mountain. In fact, read it completely stand alone from its predecessor.
Frazier’s style of writing, which to me has a dreamlike quality about it, is still present in Nightwoods. Once again, he exhibits his multipersonal approach of weaving the story together, and returns to the mountains of North Carolina as a setting. This time, the story takes place in the early 1960s, and self-exiled hermit Luce is caretaker to a decrepit lodge nearby her hometown that is accessible by roads so winding that it might as well be in the next county. Luce cherishes her solitude, which abruptly ends when news comes of her sister Lily’s murder at the hands of her sketchy husband, and Lily’s two emotionally damaged children are pawned off on Luce, courtesy of the state.
Luce learns the hard way how to be an impromptu parent to her difficult charges; she tries to teach them how to speak and to dissuade them of their pyromaniacal tendencies. The tension ratchets higher when her sister’s husband comes prowling back into town, looking for a large amount of hidden money to which he thinks the kids are privy. Add a potential romantic interest in the person of the lodge’s ex-owner’s grandson, and Luce has a drastically changed scenario. And the suspense keeps piling up all the way to the end.
Nightwoods is not some easy reading cozy – far from it. The characters are edgy, hard, damaged, and totally worth getting caught up in. This book might be a challenge for someone not used to Frazier’s writing style, but I ate it up. And his description of the outdoor world of the mountains makes the novel a shoe-in for any Blue Ridge/Smokies fan who loves nature and a good yarn.
I think it’s likely that I will give Thirteen Moons a second chance.
(William Hicks, Information Services)
Filed under: Fiction Tagged: | North Carolina Mountains in Fiction
Hi there. I just finished Nightwoods. I enjoyed it too, but I wanted to know what you and others think of the ending? I like things to be neat and tidy, and have an endpoint , whatever that may be, and this did not happen in the book. It’s been awhile since I’ve been frustrated by a book’s ending, but maybe that’s what Frazier was striving for.