Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997) ****

This novel, a National Book Award winner, has been on the NY Times Fiction
Bestsellers list for over a year now.  It's been highly praised as a modern
(well, Civil War era) version of the Odyssey because much of the story is
about a wounded Confederate soldier, Inman,  who finds the war too horrible
and pointless and has deserted, setting out on foot to return to his home and
sweetheart in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  The journey is not only long but it
is filled with obstacles, mostly human.  In places, it is very grim.  In
other places, he finds help and sympathy that keep him going and add warmth
to the story. 

A parallel plot, unfolding in alternate chapters, tells how
his sweetheart, Ada and other wives and sweethearts of soldiers who have been
left behind, often on their own, must eke out a living amidst the devastation
and  pillaging and shortages that accompanied this war.  In the end, I
concluded that it is the women who are the true heroes of this story.  It's
a powerful novel, one of the best I've read in some time.