THIRTEEN MOONS by Charles Frazier

 

This had been sitting on the ToRead shelves for far too long. I bought it in 2007. Way too long ago. Being in lockdown requires one to look at life differently, take a chance or two, be a bit serendipitous. So I picked this off the shelf and started reading. It is quite different in tone and style from the much more famous novel of Frazier - Cold Mountain, set in a similar period in American history - Civil War - but a very different story. The narrative moves slowly, but always compelling, and also quite mesmerising. One review of this I read says you want it to end because it is rather long, but on the other hand you don't want it to end because it is just so immersive. 

The story is told in the first person by Will Cooper, reflecting back on his life as his final days are closing in. Before beginning his own story he sets the scene in the southern Appalachians, Cherokee country, where the white man is slowly making inroads. There is a lot of history in this book, and I did use Google too to get the picture of this devastating period of time for the First Nation peoples. Here in NZ we have our own brutal stories resulting from the arrival of the white colonisers, but of course, even though the theme is the same, the roll out is different in each tract of land. Importantly, we are introduced to two important Cherokee men who become a bit part of Will's life. 

The story starts properly, I am guessing around 1820, with Will, a 12 year old boy, being indentured to a trader, requiring him to make a lone journey of some days with little in the way of supplies or even navigation to a trading post in the mountains that he is to be in charge of. Talk about baptism by fire and survival of the fittest. Off you go Will... let's see if you make it! Obviously he survives, and so begins his life immersed with the Cherokee of what is now North Carolina. He is a clever lad. learning from local Indian leaders, and also taking the best of what the white man's world offers. He becomes a successful trader himself, and a lawyer of sorts, ending up as the spokesman and negotiator for his tribe as the government ruthlessly pursues its goals of relocation of the Cherokee people and the taking of land. It is not pretty, and as we know much tragedy ensues.  Will himself comes in for plenty of criticism and conflict, placed in a moral dilemma that he never really gets over. 

There is love too, Will falling crazily for Clare, the ward of his nemesis the powerful Featherstone. This love will haunt him all his life, a beautiful and tragic love story.

This book is a saga, a story of a life - Will's - and the loss of a hugely important way of life - that of the Cherokee nation. Similar stories are told the world over, but this has such a human quality to it, striving to be doing the right thing, doggedly, naively, not always successfully, but always with passion and drive. The novel is very much a potted history of the expansion of America to the west, taking the mountains, moving settlers in, and the locals out. 

The author states that the character of Will Cooper is based on a real life person - William Holland Thomas - you can google him to find out more and get considerable background to this story. But the author does say this is a work of fiction.