Charles Frazier, author of Thirteen Moons

C: Was she real?
F: I made her up but I tried to invoke the spirit of the healers. She is a carrier of culture and wisdom. She knows and preserves the past into the future. She works a love spell on Cooper.

C: The characters seem to have a spiritual connection. Each knows the needs of each other.
F: Cooper connects with a sense of community and responsibility for others. As an orphan he has a need to make connections.

C: He grows, becomes a member of the NC Senate, lobbies for the Cherokee in Washington. He can even walk up to President Andrew Jackson, whom he does not like.
F: Remember that some of his "information" is told looking back. He was only in his 20s when he went to Washington dressed as a Cherokee only to learn how silly he looked.

C: He and Bear acquire more than 100,000 acres of land.
F: In the Cherokee Nation (Bear and Cooper's land is just outside it.) private ownership is a ridiculous idea. It's water passing through our bodies. It's gone. But it was a useful concept. Those on lived on the Cherokee Nation were sent West. Cooper and Bear own land so they and a few others were able to stay.

C: There is a great sense of emotional loss.
F: The threatened loss of one's homeland. The actual loss. For Cooper, there is the added loss of adopted family.

C: Could you share a bit of the research you uncovered?
F: I spent a great deal of time in the UNC Rare Book Room where I had typed catalog cards as a student. As the Cherokees were removed, great care was taken to inventory all their goods so they could be reimbursed when they got to the Indian Territories. For example: 1 cabin, 12 x 14; 1 plow; 1 axe. This went on farm by farm, about one page per farm. I got an understanding of how my ancestors lived, for their inventory would not have been so different.

C: The Civil War appears here though not with the impact in Cold Mountain.
F: Cooper appointed himself a colonel and organized a legion of Cherokees and his clerks to fight on behalf of the Confederacy. He wanted to outfit them in Zouave uniforms, but they would have none of it. His troop spent nearly all of its time in the mountains avoiding actual combat, much of it in Allen Cave, which does exist.

C: War changed him.
F: At the beginning, he says he will fight to the last man standing. Odd to think of losing at the beginning of the war. The Yankees captured Waynesville. Cooper lit fires on the tops of the ridges around the town to simulate a much larger force. It did not work for him as it did not work for William Holland Thomas.

C: One of Cooper's best friends is his horse Waverley.
F: When his aunt and uncle bought him a particularly fine horse, he knew something was up. The horse becomes his best friend in many ways, the one constant in his early life. Waverley is stolen and returned.

C: Is Thirteen Moons a love story or a life story?
F: It's a life story. Cooper wanted a lot. He connects to the Cherokee culture, a sense of holiness there. The novel provides a sense of life in the 19th Century, a time of goals and grand ideas. Cooper succeeds, fails, and succeeds again.

C: As you said earlier, Cooper is always moving forward.
F: There is a real American sense of moving into the future, going for it. When he is 92 the phone rings - maybe it is Claire calling.

C: Parts are tangibly real. Sex is real but straightforward.
F: Cooper developed a crush on Claire when he was 12. They have two summers when he is 17 or so, an idyllic teenage romance. They meet at different times in their lives. The are different at 50.

C: Each moon is explained.
F: The moons appear throughout. It indicates that the world of the book is a different world. The basic year is out the window. Time and life are reckoned differently in the Cherokee world.

C: At the end those you love go away. Cooper is moving toward the Nightland in the natural order of life and death.
F: It is a mixed blessing to live so long. The world is totally different. Cooper spans a time in which Revolutionary War veterans were still walking around in their knee breeches to the day of telephones, electricity, and cars.

C: Cooper's time in the NC Senate showed a shrewd but benevolent side.
F: He is a guy trying to preserve a culture and make as much money as he can. He is proud of his ability. He forms a corporation to grow silk worms in the NC mountains because that is the easiest way to get a corporation approved. The worms die of course, but he has the corporation and can branch out into other businesses.

C: Is Will Cooper in Charles Frazier?
F: He is more optimistic. More energetic. Every character is something from your experience. They know things that you have to research.