Frazier, Charles "Nightwoods"

Frazier, Charles "Nightwoods" - 2011

After reading "Cold Mountain", I couldn't wait for the next book of this author. Nine years later, "Thirteen Moons" appeared and I was back at the beginning, couldn't wait for the next one. I am grateful that I didn't have to wait as long this time, though four years is quite a long time, as well.

"Nightwoods", a young woman has to look after her murdered sister's twins. Not a new plot. But - there is so much more to this story, and not just the beautiful description of Charles Frazier's beloved Appalachians. He manages to describe ordinary people's lives like nobody else. All his novels have been about completely different topics, at completely different times, and, yet, he makes you feel like you are "there" all the time. Brilliant.

From the back cover:
"The extraordinary author of Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons returns with a dazzling new novel of suspense and love set in small-town North Carolina in the early 1960s.

Charles Frazier puts his remarkable gifts in the service of a lean, taut narrative while losing none of the transcendent prose, virtuosic storytelling, and insight into human nature that have made him one of the most beloved and celebrated authors in the world. Now, with his brilliant portrait of Luce, a young woman who inherits her murdered sister's troubled twins, Frazier has created his most memorable heroine.

Before the children, Luce was content with the reimbursements of the rich Appalachian landscape, choosing to live apart from the small community around her. But the coming of the children changes everything, cracking open her solitary life in difficult, hopeful, dangerous ways.

Charles Frazier is known for his historical literary odysseys, and for making figures in the past come vividly to life. Set in the twentieth century, Nightwoods resonates with the timelessness of a great work of art."