Book Tour Exclusive // Charles Frazier shares The Trackers

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In his first official appearance in Charleston, the award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author of Cold Mountain, Thirteen Moons, Nightwoods, and Varina will share insights from developing his latest success – a stunning new novel that paints a vivid portrait of life in the Great Depression. In The Trackers, singular American writer Charles Frazier conjures up the lives of everyday people during an extraordinary period of history that bears uncanny resemblance to our own. With the keen perceptions of humanity and transcendent storytelling that have made him beloved for decades, Frazier has created a powerful and timeless new classic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Frazier grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina. He has been writing critically-acclaimed, best-selling literary fiction for more than 25 years, and his work has been translated into over two dozen languages.

Cold Mountain (1997), his highly acclaimed first novel, was an international bestseller, won the National Book Award, the ABBY Award, the Heartland Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, and was an American Library Association Notable Book. In 2003, Cold Mountain was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film by screenwriter and director Anthony Minghella. Later, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon and librettist Gene Scheer adapted Cold Mountain into an opera, which premiered at Santa Fe Opera in 2015. Thirteen Moons (2006), was a New York Times bestseller, won the 2007 SIBA Book Award and the 2007 Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize, and was named a best book of the year by the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Two other books, Nightwoods (2011) and Varina (2018) were also critically acclaimed New York Times bestsellers.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Trackers is a stunning new novel that paints a vivid portrait of life in the Great Depression.

Hurtling past the downtrodden communities of Depression-era America, painter Val Welch travels westward to the rural town of Dawes, Wyoming. Through a stroke of luck, he’s landed a New Deal assignment to create a mural representing the region for their new Post Office.

A wealthy art lover named John Long and his wife Eve have agreed to host Val at their sprawling ranch. Rumors and intrigue surround the couple: Eve left behind an itinerant life riding the rails and singing in a western swing band. Long holds shady political aspirations, but was once a WWI sniper—and his right hand is a mysterious elder cowboy, a vestige of the violent old west. Val quickly finds himself entranced by their lives.

One day, Eve flees home with a valuable painting in tow, and Long recruits Val to hit the road with a mission of tracking her down. Journeying from ramshackle Hoovervilles to San Francisco nightclubs to the swamps of Florida, Val's search for Eve narrows, and he soon turns up secrets that could spark formidable changes for all of them.