Charles Frazier's first novel, Cold Mountain, stunned the literary world, becoming a best-seller and winning the 1997 National Book Award. The work also grabbed the hearts of readers by telling, as People contributor Michelle Green stated, "an eloquent and timeless love story." In Cold Mountain Frazier was not only celebrating love but also "such old fashioned virtues as hard work and self-reliance," according to Malcolm Jones, Jr., in Newsweek. "He wanted to put readers in touch with their past."

Frazier was born in 1950 in Asheville, North Carolina. Frazier's father, Charles O., was his high school principal while his mother, Betty, was a school librarian and administrator. (As Frazier commented to Green: "just imagine high school with parental scrutiny added.") Frazier also told Green he was a "moderately" good student, adding that after graduation, "I thought I wanted to teach literature, probably, if I thought about it much at all...