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I Remember My Father Checking On A Mountain Kid Who Hadn't Been Coming To School. My Father Had This Beautiful Harris Tweed Overcoat. He Came Back With A Knife Cut All Down One Side. The Parents Had Told Him It Was None Of His Business Why Their Son Wasn't Going To School.

-Charles Frazier

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I Remember My Father

Charles Frazier

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I Remember My Father Checking On A Mountain Kid Who Hadn't Been Coming To School. My Father Had This Beautiful Harris Tweed Overcoat. He Came Back With A Knife Cut All Down One Side. The Parents Had Told Him It Was None Of His Business Why Their Son Wasn't Going To School.

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From My Childhood, I Remember A Tiny Old Woman Named Mary, Made Pale And Almost Translucent By Time. Mary's Childhood Memories Extended Back To The Confusing And Violent Finale Of The Civil War, And She Told Stories Of Brutal Murders In Those Days And Refused To Name Some Of The Killers, As If Dead Men Might Still Be Prosecuted In The Late 1950s.

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While Writing Cold Mountain, I Held Maps Of Two Geographies, Two Worlds, In My Mind As I Wrote. One Was An Early Map Of North Carolina. Overlaying It, Though, Was An Imagined Map Of The Landscape Jack Travels In The Southern Appalachian Folktales. He's Much The Same Jack Who Climbs The Beanstalk, Vulnerable And Clever And Opportunistic.

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