This arrived on our shores in 1998 as a large, expensive paperback and proceeded to sell through word-of-mouth. Then the publishers made a bold decision … they brought out a hardback turning the traditional publishing route of hardback, paperback upside down. I applauded, I am a firm believer that a new author (and this was a debut novel) should earn a hardback edition, and so Charles Frazier did. There then followed a mass market paperback and later a disappointing film. This is a big novel in every sense; long, detailed, dramatic and quite wonderful.
Published for the first time in flipback - the new, portable, stylish format that's taken Europe by storm.
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 Ada, the woman he loved before the war began.
As Inman attempts to make his way across the mountains, through the devastated landscape of a soon-to-be-defeated South, Ada struggles to make a living from the land her once-wealthy father left when he died. Neither knows if the other is still alive.