Book Review: Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
I don't want to give away the ending but the beginning words say it all: "There is no scatheless rapture."
The main character remembers his life as an orphaned, bound boy to a merchant who trades with the Cherokee Nation pre-removal from their homelands. As he adjusts to his new situation, he learns a great many things: who to avoid or trust, how to communicate, how to show respect, how to keep his horse from being stolen, the value of each item in trade instead of money, random coins and their values, etc. He also gained an adopted Cherokee father and learned a great deal about love and loss. I'd say that really, the entire book is about value, whether it's people, relationships, lost love, or land. It's also about growing up and growing old, and how perspective changes with age.
Frazier twists in good humor, foreshadowing, difficult decisions, contested stories, and masterful settings with ease. It is from a white boy's perspective, regardless of who Will spent his life with and how his views meshed with his new family, and the author makes that clear within the story.
Some surprises
I found a couple of surprises in the style that I am comfortable with now, but wasn't sure about at first. Every single thing I might consider an oddity has a specific purpose and just…works.
There are no quotation marks for dialog. At first this bothered me, but I thought about it. There is an indication that somebody has started speaking, and after that, do I care? Not really. It just kind of flowed.
I didn't notice the shift between past and present tense until the end.
Despite a few reviews criticizing details gotten wrong, etc., I didn't care. Yes, there were a few things I'd researched extensively and could spout off a thing or two about what "actually happened", but in these cases did the average person in the POV character's situation know any better? Probably not. Hindsight is 20/20, and history buffs have a lot of hindsight to help them pick apart fiction books.
I'd never read a Charles Frazier book before, and I think this one is a great first! I bought it to read in tandem with the section printed in Cherokee syllabary (Tsogadu Nvdo), but I realized I couldn't wait that long to read it, so I will turn back when I can understand more Cherokee words.