Back in June, to start my Summer, I read Varina by Charles Frazier. I enjoyed the book a great deal and, as I finished the last pages, I heard an interview with Frazier in which he talked about his second book, Thirteen Moons. Since I’d now read two of Frazier’s books (he also wrote Cold Mountain), and liked them both a great deal, it seemed like picking up Thirteen Moons was a plenty good idea.
Indeed it was.
Set in the 1800s, the novel is the story of Will Cooper, a 12 year old orphan whose aunt and uncle sign a contract to bind him to a merchant. The merchant owns stores in the mountains on the edge of Indian land and has “hired” Will to man a store. At 12 years old and with no other choices, Will travels to the isolated outpost to manage the store. Over time, he makes acquaintance and then friends with the native tribes and their leaders who live in the area. Often alone for hours of each day, he reads and becomes a self-educated lawyer. Will is intelligent and curious and as he grows past his loneliness and into adulthood, the tribes, and two of their leaders, adopt him as their own. He becomes a wealthy and successful man, one who straddles two worlds and comes to prefer the natives to the American whites.
The novel begins as an elderly Will reflects on the long years of his life. His story meanders through the past and the events Will has lived through. He discusses the final years of Indian removal and the lives of the tribal members who stayed in the isolated mountains of Georgia and North Carolina. He details the politics of the eras and discusses the expansion of railroad lines. He ruefully reflects on his participation in the Civil War and considers its aftermath.
The book’s understanding of history is powerful. It’s discussion of the events of the mid-1800s in the lives of Will and the native tribes whom he knows and loves is filled with the gluttony for land and intolerance that were at the heart of Indian removal policy. Frazier also takes care to tell the story from the Indian point of view. It’s heartbreaking, of course. Frazier takes care that the reader sees it all with open eyes.
In his acknowledgments, Frazier takes pains to tell the reader that this is story of the imaginary Will Cooper. Though there are parallels to the real life of William Holland Thomas, this is not Thomas’s story. In Frazier’s telling of Will’s story, we are offered the 18th century and all its warts from a variety of views. The tale is sometimes bewildering but always generous to the human spirit despite its failings. I enjoyed the novel very much and it’s a keeper; a book I will re-read over the years.
