Book review | 'Nightwoods'
Through no fault of his own, the North Carolina writer Charles Frazier fell from everybody’s favorite success story to a symbol of the publishing industry’s profligacy. After he came out of nowhere in 1997 to sell millions of copies of a Civil War odyssey called “Cold Mountain,” New York publishers bid like drunken sailors on a one-page outline for Frazier’s second book. Random House trounced all opponents at auction by tossing off an absurd $8 million advance, the kind of money that might have paid for manuscripts from hundreds of promising literary novelists. No one was particularly surprised — though some were fiendishly delighted — when the book Frazier eventually produced, “Thirteen Moons,” sold far fewer copies than his debut.
