Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain became a phenomenon when it was released in 1997, producing massive sales for its publisher, Atlantic Monthly Press, and eventually garnering Frazier the National Book Award for fiction. In achieving this honor, Frazier surpassed such well-established literary figures as Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon, who had also published novels in the same year. Though not as reclusive as the mysterious Pynchon, Frazier is an intensely private man who has imparted little of his own personal history, preferring to avoid answering questions about himself and his family and deflecting inquiry toward his work. From the evidence available about him there emerges a quiet, meticulously slow, and detailed writer who has the luxury of time, and the novel clearly shows the great amount of time invested in its writing. Cold Mountain has its detractors, but the general critical reception has been favorable, especially for its attention to...