If you liked
Books like Cold Mountain
by Charles Frazier
Cold Mountain is Charles Frazier's National Book Award winning Civil War novel — a wounded Confederate deserter walks across the Carolinas to return home to the woman he left behind. The pastoral-prose register and the parallel-journey structure are what make it work. If you finished it and needed more reading in the same register, these are our picks.
The shortlist
What to read next
Blood Meridianby Cormac McCarthy
“Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy 1985 review. A nameless teenager joins a band of Indian-hunters along the Texas-Mexico border in 1849. The most violent American novel of the late twentieth century and the rare McCarthy book that demands the prose attention it requires.”
No Country for Old Menby Cormac McCarthy
“No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy 2005 review. A Texas welder finds a satchel of cash at a drug-deal massacre, and the man who comes for it does not stop. Late McCarthy in his cleanest thriller mode.”
All the Light We Cannot Seeby Anthony Doerr
“All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 2014 review. A blind French girl and a German orphan radio specialist meet briefly in occupied Saint-Malo at the end of World War II. Pulitzer Prize 2015 and the canonical contemporary World War II novel.”
The Great Believersby Rebecca Makkai
“The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai 2018 review. Two parallel narratives — Yale in the 1980s AIDS crisis in Chicago and Fiona in 2015 Paris. National Book Award finalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist 2019.”
The Covenant of Waterby Abraham Verghese
“The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese 2023 review. Three generations of a Christian family on the Malabar Coast of Kerala, connected by a generational drowning condition. Verghese's second major novel.”
The Goldfinchby Donna Tartt
“The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 2013 review. Theo Decker, thirteen, survives a Metropolitan Museum bombing that kills his mother and ends up with a stolen painting that defines the next decade of his life. Pulitzer Prize 2014.”
FAQ
Common questions about Cold Mountain read-alikes
- What is the closest match for Cold Mountain?
- Blood Meridian. Cormac McCarthy is the writer Cold Mountain reads as the gentler-Carolinas-pastoral cousin to. Both novels handle nineteenth-century American violence in the pastoral-historical register that contemporary American literary fiction rarely commits to.
- I want more Charles Frazier.
- Thirteen Moons (2006, on Cherokee removal), Nightwoods (2011), and Varina (2018, on Varina Davis) are the later novels. None are reviewed here yet but all are standard reading in any contemporary American historical-fiction syllabus.
- I want another Civil War or nineteenth-century American novel.
- Beloved (Toni Morrison on post-Emancipation memory), The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead on antebellum infrastructure), The Good Lord Bird (James McBride on John Brown), and James (Percival Everett on Huck Finn). All four are essential.
- I want another patient historical novel.
- All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr on World War II in Saint-Malo), The Great Believers (Rebecca Makkai on AIDS in Chicago), and The Covenant of Water (Abraham Verghese on twentieth-century Kerala). All three are doing related contemporary historical-realist work.
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