A duplicate copy. Below are my comments from the copy I read a few months back:

I actually liked this book, despite Frazier's slow style of writing. It did take me a while to get into the story, but I remember that Cold Mountain was also slow starting, so I persevered. It also helps that I love this area of the world, so close to my beloved mountains in Rabun and Oconee Counties (Georgia and SC respectively).

This is a love story, and a history, both of which captured me. HAving said all that, it did take me a little while to sort out Featherstone and Bear...but I eventually did.

Apparently, while researching Cold Mountain, Frazier came across a reference to a 90-year-old man in an asylum in Raleigh, N.C., in the late 1800s—- a white man named William Holland Thomas, who, for days, spoke nothing but Cherokee. This became the basis for Thirteen Moons, a fiction tale based on fact. As Frazier says in the afterward, Will Cooper is not William Holland Thomas, "although they do share some DNA." But the fact is that there are certain events referenced in the book, particularly with regard to the Indians, the Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears, that are real and true.

I also just read an article that was about the fellow who I think was the inspiration for Feathersone, or at least for the plantation he created.

From the Publisher

This magnificent novel by one of America’s finest writers is the epic of one man’s remarkable journey, set in nineteenth-century America against the background of a vanishing people and a rich way of life.

At the age of twelve, under the Wind moon, Will is given a horse, a key, and a map, and sent alone into the Indian Nation to run a trading post as a bound boy. It is during this time that he grows into a man, learning, as he does, of the raw power it takes to create a life, to find a home. In a card game with a white Indian named Featherstone, Will wins – for a brief moment – a mysterious girl named Claire, and his passion and desire for her spans this novel. As Will’s destiny intertwines with the fate of the Cherokee Indians – including a Cherokee Chief named Bear – he learns how to fight and survive in the face of both nature and men, and eventually, under the Corn Tassel Moon, Will begins the fight against Washington City to preserve the Cherokee’s homeland and culture. And he will come to know the truth behind his belief that “only desire trumps time.”

Brilliantly imagined, written with great power and beauty by a master of American fiction, Thirteen Moons is a stunning novel about a man’s passion for a woman, and how loss, longing and love can shape a man’s destiny over the many moons of a life.

RELEASE NOTES: I'm very happy that this one seemed to catch FutureCat's Fancy.

To the finder of this book:
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Another book grabbed at the Charleston meetup (and I was going to be so good and not take too many books home...)

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This one took me a long time to read. It was a fascinating glimpse of a part of history I knew nothing about (I knew the Native Americans were herded into reservations and their land taken, but never knew just how horrific a process it was, and how far they were transported from their homes), but I found the writing style rather difficul. It was definitely worth the effort, though - so evocative of another time and place, and of the many changes that can happen to the world during a lifetime.

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CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Given to Lytteltonwitch at tonight's meetup.

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I picked this book up ages ago and just found it in my pile next to the computer

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Was left on a seat near the playground while out getting clues for a multi cache

The Christchurch bookcrossers meet up on a regular basis,the information is on BCNZ Yahoo NZ The main organizers are FutureCat and myself and we welcome new members to our very friendly group.