Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Living… out on the long road back to Cold Mountain. On July 30, 1864, Inman was serving in the Confederate army during the siege of Petersburg. But after being wounded in battle, he deserts, starting his journey back to the love of his life, Ada. Though they only knew each other briefly before he went off to war, their love is real, and she continues to write him encouraging letters, telling him, “If you are fighting, stop fighting. If you are marching, stop marching. Come back to me. Come back to me is my request.” Inman heeds her request, and braves the dangers of going it alone.
Profession… soldier. But once he deserts, Inman’s nothing more than a rebel, a renegade, and getting caught by the officials will probably mean death by firing squad. Now a refugee, Inman is forced to rely on the kindness of strangers as he makes his way home.
Interests… survival, secrecy, and Ada. These three things swirl around in his head, keeping him on the straight path toward a better future. He is driven by love and the will to live, nothing more.
Relationship Status… deeply in love with Ada, who is waiting for him in Cold Mountain. Even through the harshest hardships, they remain devoted to one another.
Challenge… escaping detection and returning to Cold Mountain. Deadly obstacles wait around every corner: if the Union Army or his own army don't kill him, the cold or his wounds will be glad to do the job. The world is a dangerous place for a man in search of his own destiny.
Personality… quiet and strong. A born survivor, Inman knows how to kill when he must, and he knows when to thank people for their Southern hospitality. He wouldn’t survive if not for various people along his odyssey. In his words, “I ain’t gettin’ shot again for some cause I don’t believe in.”
Get to Know him in...
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In this classic story of love and devotion set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, a wounded Confederate soldier named W.P. Inman deserts his unit and travels across the South, aiming to return to his young wife, Ada, who he left behind to tend their farm. As Inman makes his perilous journey home, Ada struggles to keep their home intact with the assistance of Ruby, a mysterious drifter sent to help her by a kindly neighbor.
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NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE
One of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is a masterpiece that is at once an enthralling adventure, a stirring love story, and a luminous evocation of a vanished American in all its savagery, solitude, and splendor.
Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, Inman, a Confederate soldier, decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains and to Ada, the woman he loved there years before. His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign. At the same time, Ada is trying to revive her father's derelict farm and learn to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away. As it interweaves their stories, Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic American Odyssey--hugely powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
