Cold Mountain

Author: Charles Frazier
Publisher: 1997, Grove/Atlantic
Lexile Measure: 1210L
Classification: Fiction

Summary:
Cold Mountain is a novel (later turned into a motion picture starring Nicole Kidman, Renee Zelweger, and Jude Law) set in the south in 1864.  Its two main characters, Inman and Ada, were falling in love as the war started.  Inman served in the war, was injured, and deserted the army to reunite with Ada.  After leaving the military hospital through a window, he began a long walk back to North Carolina to find Ada on her farm. Ada, meanwhile, was left on the farm alone after her father died.  Ada was an educated, genteel woman from Charleston with virtually no practical skills or ability to fend for herself.  Luckily for Ada, a neighbor realized her plight and sent a local girl named Ruby to help her.  Ada and Ruby became friends and set about running the farm on their own.  As Ruby taught Ada how to care for the farm, Ada reconnected with the physical world around her.

Cold Mountain goes back and forth from Ada and Ruby’s story to that of Inman’s odyssey home.  Along the way, he meets a variety of characters (many unsavory).  These include an adulterous minister who impregnated his lover and intended to murder her, a man who invited Inman to his home, drugged him and forced Inman to marry and have sex with the man’s sister before turning him over to Federal soldiers, as well as gypsies, an old hermit, a widowed woman, a kind slave, and a cruel band of Federal soldiers who steal from, abuse, and execute those around them.

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Language:

• sh*t (pp. 4, 9, 59, 65, 93, 127, 165, 172, 173, 178, 207, 247, 279)
  
• a*s / a*shole (pp. 8, 127, 145, 174, 212, 262)
  
• p*ssed (pp. 55, 308)
  
• son of a b*tch (p. 57)
  
• b*stard (p. 264)
  
• d*mn / g*dd*mn (pp. 95, 175)
  
• h*ll (pp. 95, 224, 236, 237)
  
• “N” word (pp. 105, 131, 134, 144, 170, 217, 266)
  
• wh*re (p. 126)
  
• pu*sy (p. 133)
  
• b*tch (pp. 133, 168)
  

Drug and Alcohol Use:
Cold Mountain contains few references to illegal drug use, although a man who then turned him in to the Federal soldiers drugged Inman.

• The book contains numerous references to characters distilling alcohol, drinking it, and getting drunk.  Ruby’s father is an alcoholic who failed to care for Ruby in even the most basic ways, abandoning her as a toddler to fend for herself in the mountains.  Examples are on pp. 13, 14, 76-77, 82, 93, 129-130, 156, 163, 166, 169, 172, 261, 262, 264, 270, and 285.
  

Violence and Crime:

• As stated, Cold Mountain is set during the civil war and tells the story of Inman, a wounded Confederate soldier who, while recovering from his war injuries, deserts and journeys home to find his love.
• He has frequent flashbacks to brutal, vividly depicted battle scenes.  The parties he encounters are generally rough, violent people trying to survive in a war torn world.  They fight and kill and lie and cheat and steal.
• Examples include the preacher who plans to murder his pregnant lover, a man who drugs Inman and turns him over to Federal soldiers (and who Inman later kills), Federal soldiers who steal from those they encounter, and the same soldiers, who later line up their prisoners and execute them.  Examples are found on pp. 6-10, 56-58 86-95, 127, 86-90, 124, 142-149, 246-251.
  
• The book also discusses the mistreatment, torture, and murder of slaves, including references to slaves burned alive, dismembered, maimed, and left alive in cages for animals to eat.
  

Sexual Content:
Cold Mountain contains little in the way of sexuality.

• Pages 86-102 tell the story of a preacher who has impregnated a woman (other than his fiancée) and plans to kill her.
• Pages 132-135 tell of a slave’s owner falling in love with and impregnating one of his slaves.
• A character visits a prostitute on page 135. Another commits adultery on p.164.
• On pp. 168-170, two sisters seduce Inman.  The sisters later have sex with Union soldiers (p. 175).
  
• After Inman finds Ada, they have one sexual encounter that results in her becoming pregnant with his child (p. 341).
  

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