Certainly, a major undercurrent of Cold Mountain is that of nostalgia, a yearning for a time when most men and women lived closer to the earth, paid closer heed to the cycles of the seasons, knew the names and properties of plants, noticed the habits of animals. This aspect of the novel has led at least one reviewer to accuse Frazier of escapism, of a failure to create a living art, an art that grows out of its author's own time and experience.

And some of Frazier's own comments have lent support to such criticisms.

One can partly answer the charge of escapist nostalgia by pointing to details in the novel which show clearly that not everything about the past was superior to the present. For instance, the goatwoman's forced marriage to an old man who worked his wives to death like abused farm animals is...