There's a lot to like in âThirteen Moons'. First, probably, is the incredible job Frazier does in describing the hardwood forest environment of the Cherokee Territory that encompassed 140,000 square miles over land that later became parts of North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. When Will Cooper rides through this wild and beautiful landscape, the reader is right there with him, whether admiring it or struggling to survive in it.
Frazier also uses vocabulary that may have the reader searching through obscure word lists â the first sentence of the book declares that âthere is no scatheless raptureâ â but which continually conjures believable vocabulary and language usage of the post-Revolutionary, pre-Western expansion period of U.S. history.
And the background upon which he has placed this fictional memoir is one of the saddest and perhaps most misunderstood events in the clashes between European settlers and the native inhabitants â the dissolution of the Cherokee Territory and the forced relocation of its inhabitants to what eventually became Oklahoma, along the Trail of Tears (which Frazier accurately renders as âthe trail where they criedâ. Like any vibrant and living culture, that of the Cherokee was not monolithic. There were multiple factions and wildly varying responses to the nascent United States' demands; while Frazier doesn't go into great detail (the book would have been 1400 pages instead of 400 if he had done so), he spends enough time on it to get the job done. The job being to portray the attempts of his main character to help his adopted clan stay in their ancestral home.
Less satisfying is the character development of two of the main characters in the book â Claire, the woman Will loves, and the morally ambiguous Featherstone, whose presence in Claire's life makes the budding romance between her and Will tenuous at best and impossible at worst. The problem is that we really never quite understand why Will seems to continue to respect Featherstone; why he doesn't take what would appear to be the logical action when their conflict erupts into the open. Nor are we ever made privy to the reasons Claire keeps walking away from Will,
These problems keep the book from being truly remarkable; even with them, it is a rich and satisfying read.
Frazier also uses vocabulary that may have the reader searching through obscure word lists â the first sentence of the book declares that âthere is no scatheless raptureâ â but which continually conjures believable vocabulary and language usage of the post-Revolutionary, pre-Western expansion period of U.S. history.
And the background upon which he has placed this fictional memoir is one of the saddest and perhaps most misunderstood events in the clashes between European settlers and the native inhabitants â the dissolution of the Cherokee Territory and the forced relocation of its inhabitants to what eventually became Oklahoma, along the Trail of Tears (which Frazier accurately renders as âthe trail where they criedâ. Like any vibrant and living culture, that of the Cherokee was not monolithic. There were multiple factions and wildly varying responses to the nascent United States' demands; while Frazier doesn't go into great detail (the book would have been 1400 pages instead of 400 if he had done so), he spends enough time on it to get the job done. The job being to portray the attempts of his main character to help his adopted clan stay in their ancestral home.
Less satisfying is the character development of two of the main characters in the book â Claire, the woman Will loves, and the morally ambiguous Featherstone, whose presence in Claire's life makes the budding romance between her and Will tenuous at best and impossible at worst. The problem is that we really never quite understand why Will seems to continue to respect Featherstone; why he doesn't take what would appear to be the logical action when their conflict erupts into the open. Nor are we ever made privy to the reasons Claire keeps walking away from Will,
These problems keep the book from being truly remarkable; even with them, it is a rich and satisfying read.
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