Cold Mountain

During the last months of the American Civil War, W. P. Inman, a wounded Confederate soldier tired of fighting, leaves a military hospital and sets out on foot for Cold Mountain, North Carolina, and Ada Monroe, the woman he loves. On his walk across a ruined South he meets marauders and slaves, witches and bounty hunters. Ada, a minister's daughter from Charleston, is meanwhile trying to save her late father's run-down farm, helped by Ruby, a resourceful young drifter. Nearly every chapter alternates between the two, and the trip home echoes Homer's Odyssey. Frazier's first novel, it won the National Book Award for Fiction, sold about three million copies and became an Academy Award-winning film by Anthony Minghella.

Bryan Callen, co-host of The Fighter and the Kid, included it in his Top Three Must Reads recommendations.