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Charles Frazier has a distinctive way with words. Although other critics have condemned his lush descriptions and detailed action passages, I usually enjoy them. I especially liked the way his first novel, Cold Mountain, was written. The words Frazier uses to call up the sensuous pleasures of the North Carolina mountains were one of the best parts of the book for me.

His most recent novel, Nightwoods, has some of that same flair. The first sentence is a doozy: “Luce’s new stranger children were small and beautiful and violent.” The adjectives create the perfect effect. So many adjectives he could have chosen, but he chose the best ones. And not only does the sentence give a poignantly accurate description of the children; it also focuses the reader’s attention on characters who occupy the center of the story although it’s not their story.

Nightwoods is Luce’s story.  A reclusive woman, Luce has retreated to live as caretaker of an abandoned lodge in Frazier’s beloved North Carolina mountains. Her solitude is destroyed when state authorities ask her to take her murdered sister’s children. She’s not thrilled with the idea, but she loved her sister, so she agrees. Little does she know that Bud, the man who murdered her sister, has reason to want the children dead, too. They witnessed the murder. And Bud believes they have a box of money he left at their house before an inept prosecutor allowed him to be acquitted of the crime.

Bud’s hunt for the children drives the plot forward, but Luce’s awkward, yet loving treatment of the children is the story’s soul. As the novel’s opening sentence implies, they are not easy children to love. In their first weeks at the lodge, they don’t talk. They are fascinated with fire and soon ignite the back corner of the lodge. As her solitary nature suggests, Luce is not a woman for whom loving comes easily. Yet she treats the children with respect and tries to merge their world with hers, while protecting them from themselves.

Like the children, the first part of Nightwoods doesn’t talk much. The lack of dialogue seems to hold the story tight, not letting it naturally expand. As readers, we watch Luce and the children, Dolores and Frank, go through their daily activities. Meanwhile, Bud finds the mountain town that he knows is where his dead wife’s family lives and where he suspects the children are now.

In Part II of Nightwoods, Dolores and Frank finally speak. Luce has heard them speak to each other, but for the first time, they speak to her. As their communication begins to open, so does the novel. The owner of the lodge has died, and his nephew, Stubblefield, arrives to check out the property he’s inherited. Since he grew up in the area, Stubblefield remembers Luce as the young beauty she once was. He had strong feelings for her when he was seventeen and now, having found her living almost as a hermit, he is attracted to her again.

Part III is where Nightwoods explodes. Frazier’s storytelling switches from past tense to present tense, giving the narrative an urgency it hasn’t had before. A new omniscient narrator also steps in, giving the reader views of Dolores and Frank not available before. Bud discovers where Luce and the children are living and goes to investigate. When Dolores and Frank see him, they know they’re in trouble, and they think their only solution is to run. They help themselves to a pony belonging to Luce’s only friend on the mountain and take off through the woods.

As Bud tracks the children from one direction and Luce, accompanied by Stubblefield and other townspeople, takes up the search from another, the story expands like the blossom at the end of a tight narrow stem.

As I said at the beginning, I like the way Charles Frazier writes. I still think Cold Mountain is his best novel so far, but Nightwoods has its moments. There are many sentences nearly as perfect as the first one. Add to those an engaging cast of characters and an affecting plot, and you have a novel I’m glad I read.