Cold Mountain

Near the end of the Civil War, a wounded Confederate deserter named Inman walks home across North Carolina to Cold Mountain, the real peak in the Shining Rock Wilderness of Haywood County, and to Ada, who is struggling to keep her dead father's farm at Black Cove alive with the help of the drifter Ruby. The mountain and its community are real; the farm is invented and set at its foot. Inman's long journey west, from a Confederate hospital in Raleigh across the rivers of the Piedmont, runs as a chain of scenes outside the home setting.

Inman

The Confederate hospital, Raleigh

Opening

Inman lies among the dying in a Raleigh hospital, reading and staring out a tall window at the wall beyond. Sick of the war and the killing, he climbs out of that window one night and sets off on foot for the far western mountains and home, deserting the army he no longer believes in.

Opening chapter

inferred The novel opens in a Confederate military hospital in Raleigh, where Inman is recovering from a neck wound; the city is real, the particular ward invented. Sited in the state capital where he begins his walk west.

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