Thirteen Moons

(Random House, 422 pages)

<$z$>“THERE is no scatheless rapture.”Thus begins Charles Frazier’s second novel, leaving no doubt what readers are in for over the next 422 pages. Now is the time, according to the dictates of personal taste, to gratefully turn back or gleefully plunge ahead, deep into the land of historical romance.

Either way, you’ve been warned: “There is no scatheless rapture.”

There is, instead, a grandly flawed and expressive hero, Will Cooper, sold off by his aunt and uncle as a boy and thrown into a beautiful but dying Cherokee culture.

There are his exploits as senator / colonel / Indian chief, both within said Nation and without, as he masters the wilds of the Southern mountains and the wiles of crooked Washington, DC.

There is betrayal and bloodshed, though not too much, and camaraderie around the campfire, where Will cooks up a mean meal on occasion, augmented by fine literature and finer wine.

There is Calhoun, Crockett and the Civil War, augmented by a host of other colourful characters and broadly rendered set pieces. And, of course, there is a woman, physically spectacular and psychologically blank — a perfect fit for one of the fine American actresses who will, no doubt, soon be vying for the role.

Claire comes and goes in Will’s life without much explanation (Frazier clearly loves the thwarted love affair, but while war intruded in Cold Mountain, these two are parted by less understandable obstacles). She’s prone to irritatingly cryptic comments and unfortunately timed disclosures. She doesn’t seem particularly real. But she looks great in her close-ups.

So, too, does Frazier’s beloved South, which comes alive in surprising bursts, as when he describes the attack of a copperhead: “Its mouth flew open as if on hinges, like flinging open a valise with a pale-pink satin lining. The motion of the strike was a jerking lurch, more awkward than I would have guessed.”

But these particulars, much like the irresistible swell of Claire’s behind, get lost in the greater wash of the novel, which strains after the epic with unfortunate results. Frazier is constantly overwriting, ladling on far too many side plots and embarrassing everyone with love scenes in which Will and Claire go “at each other with incandescent yearning, all the bleak hopefulness of youth manifested in our grasping and clashing”.

The worst offender is Will himself, a consummate blowhard whether trading folksy witticisms with his adopted Indian father, Bear, or rehashing a parting with Claire: “You live with such choices until you die. They eat at you like heartworm, coring you out until you are just a skin enclosing nothing. A balloon filled with hot breath.”

Such pronouncements, both obvious and overblown, take all the fun out of what could be a pretty decent yarn. But, you know what they say about rapture.