Book: Nightwoods by Charles Frazier

Nightwoods is a wonderful novel by the man who wrote Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons. It is set in the 1960s in the hills of North Carolina.

Luce is a young woman, living in an old lodge, generally satisfied with her life, although she is isolated, and has limited social contact. The lodge was once a successful vacation destination, situated across a mountain lake from the nearest town. It is now only a relic, empty except for Luce. The owner was an elderly gentleman who died and left his property to a wandering, footloose grandson named Stubblefield. When Luce's sister is murdered by her brutal low-minded husband, Luce becomes the caretaker of a young niece and nephew, nearly mute and feral children who love to start fires and who settle in with Luce, but reluctantly.

The book is beautifully written, evoking so clearly the seasons and landscape of North Carolina, the creeks and twisting mountain roads, the woods and trails, the weather and fauna. There are flashbacks to Luce's adolescence and Frazier has also drawn fine characters: the children, the murdering husband, the lawman with his addictions, the small town folk, along with Luce and Stubblefield and Maddie, an old woman of the hills, surviving on her own, who becomes part of the salvation. The story has a beginning, a middle and an ending, all satisfactory, and along the way, tells of a time and place in our country in vivid prose.

The book is rich in description and narrative--a love story that moves in several directions enveloping the memorable characters.

"She sipped Scotch considerably older than she was, the taste of time in its passing in harmony with the outer world, where poplars were already half bare and long grasses drooped burnt from the first frost. The call of an evening bird, and the sun low. Bands of lavender and slate clouds moving against a metallic sky, denoting the passage of autumn. Fallen leaves blown onto the porch. The planet racking around again towards winter."