Cold Mountain Characters

Inman is the leading man of this story. It's easy for readers to connect with his longing to go home from the suffering and fear of the Civil War…especially knowing he's had a bad wound. He's a t...

Ada Monroe is a bright and sophisticated woman…with a super-deep interior life. She's always felt at odds with the expectations Charleston society has for her, and now she's somehow ended up in t...

Need to feed fifteen people on short notice? Chop down a tree and make a fence? Trade a piano for a great haul of hogs and sheep? Survive the winter? Ruby can do it all. This resolutely practical w...

Monroe, Ada's father, is already dead when the book begins. But he's an important character all the same. He's wise and kind and sophisticated and thoughtful, maybe a bit like Dumbledore. And like...

Esco and Sally Swanger are the people everyone wants as neighbors. They're hardworking, generous, kind, and steady. And they have the practical smarts to run a farm well. They're like a favorite au...

Stobrod is not the man you want to hire. Actually, he's not really the man you want to be your dad, either, but Ruby doesn't have much choice in the matter. He's as lazy as they come, barely doing...

Pangle is a lovable character, even though we don't see very much of him in the book. He has significant difficulties with learning, and few people pay much attention to him, unfortunately. But he...

Teague is just plain mean. He runs the Home Guard near Cold Mountain, so he has the official duty of finding deserters and either sending them back to the war or punishing them. There's probably ro...

Veasey is a guy you don't want on your group study project. Or really anything that requires brains and work. He's just not willing to work very hard at life, and he makes a lot of dumb decisionsâ€...

The woman with the goats is a bit strange, but she's kind and generous. She aids Inman's healing with herbal salves, medicine, and kindness. She's been living on her own for a long time, but she st...

Sara's kind and hospitable, despite being dirt poor and with a baby to care for. Her husband was killed in the fighting, and she has very little, but she's willing to share it. Though she has littl...

Yep, Junior's house is as crooked as a Tim Burton set. So is he, as it turns out. In Burton, all that crookedness usually means lovable quirkiness. In Junior, it just means trouble. Not only did he...