Fall Sale! Join BookBrowse today and discover exceptional books for only $3 / Month.

Summary and Reviews of Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier

Thirteen Moons

by Charles Frazier
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • First Published:
  • Oct 3, 2006, 432 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jun 2007, 422 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Book Summary

At the age of twelve, Will Cooper is given a horse, a key, and a map and is sent to run a remote Indian trading post. There he is adopted by a Cherokee chief, and falls in love with a girl he won in a card game.

Charles Frazier’s Thirteen Moons is the story of one man’s remarkable life, spanning a century of relentless change. At the age of twelve, an orphan named Will Cooper is given a horse, a key, and a map and is sent on a journey through the wilderness to the edge of the Cherokee Nation, the uncharted white space on the map. Will is a bound boy, obliged to run a remote Indian trading post. As he fulfills his lonesome duty, Will finds a father in Bear, a Cherokee chief, and is adopted by him and his people, developing relationships that ultimately forge Will’s character. All the while, his love of Claire, the enigmatic and captivating charge of volatile and powerful Featherstone, will forever rule Will’s heart.

In a distinct voice filled with both humor and yearning, Will tells of a lifelong search for home, the hunger for fortune and adventure, the rebuilding of a trampled culture, and above all an enduring pursuit of passion. As he comes to realize, “When all else is lost and gone forever, there is yearning. One of the few welcome lessons age teaches is that only desire trumps time."

Will Cooper, in the hands of Charles Frazier, becomes a classic American soul: a man devoted to a place and its people, a woman, and a way of life, all of which are forever just beyond his reach. Thirteen Moons takes us from the uncharted wilderness of an unspoiled continent, across the South, up and down the Mississippi, and to the urban clamor of a raw Washington City. Throughout, Will is swept along as the wild beauty of the nineteenth century gives way to the telephones, automobiles, and encroaching railways of the twentieth. Steeped in history, rich in insight, and filled with moments of sudden beauty, Thirteen Moons is an unforgettable work of fiction by an American master.

PART ONE

...

bone moon

1

There is no scatheless rapture. love and time put me in this condition. I am leaving soon for the Nightland, where all the ghosts of men and animals yearn to travel. We’re called to it. I feel it pulling at me, same as everyone else. It is the last unmapped country, and a dark way getting there. A sorrowful path. And maybe not exactly Paradise at the end. The belief I’ve acquired over a generous and nevertheless inadequate time on earth is that we arrive in the afterlife as broken as when we departed from the world. But, on the other hand, I’ve always enjoyed a journey.

Cloudy days, I sit by the fire and talk nothing but Cherokee. Or else I sit silent with pen and paper, rendering the language into Sequoyah’s syllabary, the characters forming under my hand like hen- scratch hieroglyphs. On sunny days, I usually rock on the porch wrapped in a blanket and read and admire the vista. Many decades ago, when I built my ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

After a strong start, my interest waned during the second half of the book, when things started to bog down - I turned the pages faster and faster, not because it was such a gripping read, but simply in the hope of finding something that would grip!..continued

Full Review (772 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

Media Reviews

Boston Globe
A boisterous, confident novel that draws from the epic tradition... Frazier is a natural storyteller, and throughout his picaresque tale are grand themes and eulogies.

Los Angeles Times
Thirteen Moons is rare in many ways and occupies a literary plane of such height that reviewing it is not really salient….Thirteen Moons has the power to inspire great performances from succeeding generations of writers….For those who simply value the literary experience, Thirteen Moons will provide the immense satisfaction of taking a literary journey of magnitude. Whether on a plane, in an office or curled in a window seat, readers who absorb Will's story will find their own lives enriched….Thirteen Moons belongs to the ages.

Newsweek
Gorgeous…calls Cold Mountain to mind in its wonder at the natural world; its pacificist undercurrents; its dismay at the dismantling of what matters, and its convication that one love, no matter how tortured and inexplicable, can be life-defining…fascinating…vivid and alive.

Washington Post
Longer and even duller than Cold Mountain....reading Frazier is like sitting by the cracker barrel for hour after hour and listening to an amiable but impossibly gassy guy who talks real slow, says "I reckon" a whole lot and never shuts up. His novels have little structure and not much in the way of plot.

Kirkus Reviews
Thirteen Moons brings this vanished world thrillingly to life...one of the great Native American -- and American -- stories, and a great gift to all of us, from one of our very best writers.

Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The history that Frazier hauntingly unwinds through Will is as melodic as it is melancholy, but the sublime love story is the narrative's true heart.

Booklist - Brad Hooper
For the first fourth of the book, there is too much detail for the plot to easily bear. But, finally, the characters are able to step out from behind this blanket of particulars and incidentals and make the story work.

Library Journal
This work gets more unbelievable as it goes on....the Natives are stock characters, Will himself lacks depth and complexity...a tiresome novel.

Reader Reviews

Karen

Thirteen Moons is wonderful!
I stumbled upon this book because it had a lot of Native American and Cherokee information in it. (I avidly read any historical fiction that I can get my hands on.) I had not read Cold Mountain, so I had no preformed opinion. I am on my fourth...   Read More
gill sones

superbly written
I thought Cold Mountain was good but this book is just excellent! I have just finished reading it for the second time and because of the superb way it is written, I found images in it I had missed on the first reading. I rushed it the first time as ...   Read More
rezgrrl

A Different Perspective
A self professed book snob, I have been reading and loving classic literature from a very early age. Many years ago I picked up Cold Mountain because I knew that Frazer is from the same mountain region as I. It left me stunned and amazed, and in love...   Read More
jim richman

a differant time I miss
The 1800s were the time for Americans to have the greatest adventures-- and when one can go back to those time by way of a great story teller---- it is magic---I hated to get to the end of the story as I knew I would for ever miss those people and ...   Read More

Write your own review!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



The Trail of Tears

In the early 1800s, the US felt threatened by England and Spain, who held land in the western part of the North American continent (See map: Oregon Country was British owned, while Mexico was obviously Spanish). Meanwhile, American settlers on the East Coast clamored for more land. So Jefferson proposed the creation of a buffer zone down the middle of the country, to be populated by Eastern American Indians - allowing for US expansion West, and presumably designed to slow down European expansion East.

In his 1829 inaugural address, President Andrew Jackson set a policy to relocate eastern Indians which was endorsed in 1830 when Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. Between 1830 and 1850 American Indians living between Michigan, ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Thirteen Moons, try these:

  • The Blood of Heaven jacket

    The Blood of Heaven

    by Kent Wascom

    Published 2014

    About this book

    More by this author

    A remarkable portrait of a young man seizing his place in a violent new world, a moving love story, and a vivid tale of ambition and political machinations that brilliantly captures the energy and wildness of a young America where anything was possible.

  • The Son jacket

    The Son

    by Philipp Meyer

    Published 2014

    About this book

    More by this author

    Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching portrait of the bloody price of power, The Son is an utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American West.

We have 9 read-alikes for Thirteen Moons, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Charles Frazier
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Empusium
    The Empusium
    by Olga Tokarczuk
    Not long after checking into Willi Opitz's "Guesthouse for Gentlemen," young Mieczysław Wojnicz...
  • Book Jacket
    Suggested in the Stars
    by Yoko Tawada
    In Scattered All Over the Earth, Yoko Tawada's 2018 lightly dystopian novel, a ragtag group of young...
  • Book Jacket: Shred Sisters
    Shred Sisters
    by Betsy Lerner
    "No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister" is a wry aphorism that appears late in ...
  • Book Jacket: Model Home
    Model Home
    by Rivers Solomon
    Rivers Solomon's novel Model Home opens with a chilling and mesmerizing line: "Maybe my mother is ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Naming Song
    by Jedediah Berry

    Miyazaki meets Guillermo del Toro.

  • Book Jacket

    In the Garden of Monsters
    by Crystal King

    A woman with no past, a man who knows her, and a monstrous garden that separates their worlds.

Book Club Giveaway!
Win Let Us Descend

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward imagines the life of an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War in this instant classic.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J O the B

and be entered to win..