Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier

My ultimate "ding" for an audiobook is to stop listening after the first disk.  This story passed the first disk "test" with flying colors and I was ready to recommend it to a friend even though I had not finished the book.  Looking back, it was almost like the movie trailers where I saw all of the best parts in the previews and the full length movie had a lot of dull parts that filled the gaps between those sequences.

This story is quite a tale but it is not well told.  The main character, Will, has adventures that simply are not possible in the 21st century.  The two main story lines trace Will's relationships and adventures with the love of his life and the Cherokee Indians who adopted him as a youth.  He's the narrator and the unfolding of his adventures and misfortunes paints a picture of a sympathetic, likable guy.  I realized near the end of the book that if I stepped back and thought about Will from any other context that he could be regarded as someone whose over zealous nature over ran some commonly accepted American ideals.  The first half of the book kept my interest and had me wanting to "hear" more.  The second half dragged and was a disappointment.  If I didn't live in North Carolina and enjoyed the nuggets of NC history, this book would not be worth the time to listen or to tread.

I also listened to Frazier's earlier book, Cold Mountain.  While both books covered complex issues, I finished Cold Mountain and could not help reflecting on some of the book's messages about war.  When I finished Thirteen Moons, I was glad to be done.  That's it.  Somehow the big issue, the removal of Cherokee Indians from their land, was handled in a "this is bad" manner rather than using the story to make it more personal (and real) like Frazier did in Cold Mountain.