Sept. 18, 2006 issue - Not far from Cherokee, North Carolina, Charles Frazier pulls to the side of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and points off into the Smokies. "OK, you're sort of looking into the territory of the novel now," he says. The novel in question is "Thirteen Moons," his follow-up to "Cold Mountain." A few feet from the car a historical marker notes, with a whiff of outrage, that Cherokee used to live as far as the eye can see and farther still. Then, of course, came broken treaties, Andrew Jackson's order for their removal and the desolate, often fatal, passage down the Trail of Tears. "That's how my first ancestors came here—settling Cherokee land," Frazier says, once he's eased his car back onto the road. "I came over a couple of weeks ago to meet with Chief Hicks and to say, 'I grew up here. I grew up on land that had been your land. I remember finding arrowheads in cornfields as a kid.' What I was interested in was not telling their story, but the story of this piece of country, that transition from their people to my people. I just said, 'I hope this book will be seen as the work of a good neighbor'."

Once Frazier arrives in Cherokee, he's asked to appear before the tribal council and say a few words about himself. He wasn't expecting this. He is a soft-spoken man, and looks briefly nonplused at the podium. Fortunately, no one has mentioned that the meeting is being broadcast on live TV. When Frazier is finished speaking, there's a silence before chairman Dan McCoy delivers his verdict: "He's a country boy, just like us." Then councilwoman Tommye Saunooke speaks up. "Darn good author, too, I'll tell you that," she says. "If I bring in my copy of 'Cold Mountain,' will you autograph it?"

Frazier published "Cold Mountain," his debut novel, in 1997. He was 46. He had quit teaching at a local university to write it, after his wife, Katherine, told him, "You don't want to wake up at 65 and wonder what kind of book you would have written." The novel concerned a wounded, soul-sick Confederate soldier who deserts and treks home to the Blue Ridge Mountains and his one true love. "Cold Mountain" was riveting, though too meticulously written to be a page-turner in the usual sense: reading it was a steep hike, rather than a walk in the woods. Frazier hoped there might be 10,000 Southerners who'd buy it. But even without the divine agency of Oprah, the novel has become a modern classic, with more than 4 million copies in print. Today, outside Cherokee, Frazier passes a restaurant that his work obviously inspired: Inman's Cold Mountain Cafe. When it's pointed out that a lot of authors have given the American people great books, but not a lot have given them all the pancakes they can eat for $3.99, Frazier laughs and nods, looking slightly embarrassed. "I've contributed," he says.

While researching "Cold Mountain," Frazier came across a reference to a 90-year-old man in an asylum in Raleigh, N.C., in the late 1800s—a white man named William Holland Thomas, who, for days, spoke nothing but Cherokee. The story became "Thirteen Moons." By April 2002, Frazier had already done some legwork on the book, but knew what he'd written was too woolly to show prospective publishers: "It'd go from a pretty finished scene that was five or 10 pages long, to 10 pages of plant names, to the recipe for yellow-jacket soup." Instead, he wrote a one-page proposal for "Thirteen Moons" before coffee one morning. Random House paid $8.25 million for it, and producer Scott Rudin ponied up $3 million for the movie rights. Frazier was admonished in some newspapers for leaving the small publisher, Grove Atlantic, that had discovered him, though he's still friends with his former editor. (Grove had bid $6 million in partnership with Vintage paperbacks.) It was not an entirely pleasant time for such a private person, although, sure, there are worse problems a guy could have. "I called my mother after the deal was done and I said, 'There may be some stuff in the papers about this'," says Frazier. "She said, 'Oh, I already know. I saw it on the crawl on CNN'."

"Thirteen Moons" is a gorgeous book. The novel's narrated by ancient and feisty Will Cooper, who wants to set a few, but not all, things straight before heading off for "the Nightland." At 12, Will, an orphaned white boy, is sold into indentured servitude at a Cherokee trading post, and finds a father figure in a tribal elder named Bear. Will studies every book within arm's reach. He falls for an elusive girl named Claire and even fights a duel for her—not that this stops him from frequenting prostitutes. He buys hundreds of thousands of acres in his and Bear's names and, as a state senator, travels to Washington to argue that his adopted tribe cannot be banished from the land because—gotcha!—they now own it. "Thirteen Moons" calls "Cold Mountain" to mind in its wonder at the natural world; its pacifist undercurrents; its dismay at the dismantling of what matters, and its conviction that one love, no matter how tortured and inexplicable, can be life-defining. The new novel is more ambitious and not always as tightly wound as its predecessor. But its history lessons are more fascinating and various, its prose more vivid and alive—the irony being that writing comes hard to Frazier, and "Thirteen Moons" was written during years' worth of all-nighters that obliterated all else.

Even now, after advance raves for the new novel, there is still the occasional snipe in the media about Frazier's rich deal—evidence of our peculiar, self-fulfilling notion that art should never sell and that only hacks should get the big bucks. "All that stuff about money—I sort of understand where it comes from. Do I like it? No, I don't, but it comes with the territory," says Frazier. He's sitting in a coffee lounge, waiting for a meeting about a translation project he's funding to render portions of the novel into Cherokee, part of an initiative to keep the language alive. "I saw something that said I was 'the symbol of greed in the publishing industry.' I'm not the one who decided what the offers were gonna be on the book. And it's not like I went into this just looking to take the highest offer." Several offers were in the same vicinity, he says, but the strength of Random House's marketing team was a factor. The publisher could hardly be handling the novel with more gravitas. These days, when Frazier says something goofy to his family—when he relates a joke from "South Park," say—his 20-year-old daughter, Annie, will needle him by intoning, "An American master returns!"

Frazier is still more comfortable being called "a country boy just like us" than "an American master." As a Southerner who comes from an unbroken line of readers, however, he would certainly defend a person's inalienable right to be both. "One time at the University of Colorado, at a faculty dinner, this professor said to me, 'Well, my goodness, a boy from Appa-LAY-chee-a with a Ph.D.!' The dinner was in her house. And I said, 'My grandparents didn't have indoor plumbing, but they had more books in their house than you do'." He laughs. "I was a little insulted by the Appa-LAY-chee-a business." He shakes his head. "Yep, and I got shoes on!" And wherever he walks, we'll follow.