Sooner or later, history asks, which side were you on?
In his powerful new novel, Charles Frazier returns to the time and place of Cold Mountain, vividly bringing to life the chaos and devastation of the Civil War
Her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects the secure life of a Mississippi landowner. Davis … whom she expects the secure life of a Mississippi landowner. Davis instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history—culpable regardless of her intentions.
The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives with “bounties on their heads, an entire nation in pursuit.”
Intimate in its detailed observations of one woman’s tragic life and epic in its scope and power, Varina is a novel of an American war and its aftermath. Ultimately, the book is a portrait of a woman who comes to realize that complicity carries consequences.
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Interesting view of history. But not enough of a story for the length of the book.
Loved this story of Varina Howell. She is married to a much older Jefferson Davis. Her life is interesting and his telling of it is wonderful.
Varina is the story of Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s wife Varina. The book is historical fiction but paints a clear picture of the confederacy and the struggles of southerners when the government fell. Very interesting picture of how people in the south came to terms with the loss of slavery. It showed their struggles in coming to terms with the end of a lifestyle.
Personally I adored it. I learned from it and that is very important to me. It is about the Civil War but not the Atlanta burning kind of book. I eagerly await his next book!
It portrayed a sad, yet meaningful time in our country’s history. Though a fictional account, it humanized the people most affected by the Civil war, many caught up in tragedy, not responsible, but made to suffer.