Varina: A Novel

I have read a lot of Civil War southern stories. This one rang the most true. That time was neither as bad or as good as historians would have you believe. Varina was an unusual woman for those times and a pleasure to read about. Raised in the south as I was and living through segregation and into the crazy integration year's it is refreshing to read about folks in that time not being so sensitive to the exclusion of blacks in white culture.
I was surprised as well at the back lash against the confederate government for getting the south into an impossible war which could not be won. Some news would have you believe that the south has harbored feelings that they were wronged, never conquered and still separate. But this book would suggest most

I very much appreciated this piece of historical fiction. I had no prior knowledge of this character or her life as Davis's wife. I found it interesting that Varina did not hold the same views as her husband despite her place in the society of the time. This was revealing. There was only one confusion in the way the author presented the storyline in numerous dates and out of sequence. However, once I recognized the sense of the story fragments, it was easily followed.

Varina Davis lived in the manner of the young ladies of her day save one; she was married to a man who would become a traitor to his country. told in a flashback conversation it just proves that not all of those southern belles were soft and fragile. she was smart, witty and would hold her own in any confrontation.

superbly written. engaging from the opening sentence. now I wish to learn more about her.

Varina Howell was born in Natchez Mississippi and died eighty years later in 1906 her New York apartment. Her journey was tragic from birth to the businessman son of a New Jersey governor named WB Howell to the wife and mother of Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) the first and only President of the doomed Confederate States of America. A burgeoning nation which was based on the pillars of chattel slavery and states rights. Varina was a brilliant girl who was infatuated by her older tutor Winchester. She married the much older widower Jefferson Davis and had several children. Her son Joe fell to his death from a balcony at the Confederate White House called the Gray House. Varina was a teenaged wife of Congressman Jeff Davis in the 1840s who won fame for his exploits at the battle of Buena Vista in the Mexican War. He later became Secretary of War during the administration of Franklin Pierce and a United States Senator from Mississippi. While in Washington City, Varina befriended the South Carolina diarist Mary Chesnut and met all the notables in that capitol city. During the Civil War she grew to hate Richmond society which stuck its collective nose up at her as a dark skinned tall woman from the raw West. Varina and Jefferson Davis spent about half their marriage living apart. Varina lived in Paris, London and Germany overseeing the education of her children. She helped Jefferson complete his memoirs and spent several of his last years with the ex president at the estate of Sara Dorsey on the Gulf Coast. Davis was imprisoned for over two years at the end of the Civil War and indicted for treason; he was never tried and bail was obtained for his release. He was a sad, ill and tragic figure of a lost cause.
Varina died in New York City a sad woman who believed the South was wrong in enslaving Africans. She mourned all the thousands who died in the Civil War. She met such luminaries as James Whistler, Oscar Wilde and became friends with Julia Dent Grant the former first lady of the United States and widow of General U.S. Grant. Varina was a liberated woman for her time and had a fine mind and poetic soul. You will like her after reading this marvelous novel!
Dr. Charles Frazer is a native of North Carolina and the author of Cold Mountain a classic novel. His writing is rich and evocative of the defeat hanging like a noxious miasama over the defeated South. A poetic writer who uses metaphor to paint the tragic view of postbellum Southern life. Varina is the best novel I have read this year and I recommend it highly.

VARINA by Charles Frazier
The person is eminently interesting – the wife of the Confederate President. The era is interesting – the decades before, during, and after the American Civil War. The episodes are fascinating – a Southern white woman raising an enslaved child as her own: the escape of fugitives in a devastated land: the marriage of a 17 year old to a 40 year old. So why didn’t I like it?
The episodes are just that – episodes that jump from decade to decade with no cohesion. The story is not a story – there is no plot. The tempo and pacing are erratic at best.
BUT… the writing is wonderful. The conclusions are insightful. The characters are real and well presented.
YOU might like it. I didn’t.
3 of 5 stars

History is written by the victor. War is murder. Slavery is evil.

Though this is a novel, the history rings true in a story that provides a keen insight into the lives of Southerners after the war - their losses and their suffering - particularly those who had the least to lose.

Varina Davis comes alive in this novel to tell her story, not to explain or apologize but to expose the humanity of her unique situation.

Frazier has done it again! Stunning piece of work!

This is a novel about memory and the emotions that attend it, especially remorse and guilt. It interested me at every turn of the page; sometimes it thrilled me, especially when Varina Davis (Mrs. Jefferson) reflects on how the political situation in the US in 1860 disintegrated to the point that war happened because it couldn't be stopped. The book urged me to think about the divisions in the country right now, in 2018, and to wonder, "Is a civil war possible, once more? Could one or several of the non-negotiable issues that now divide us: guns, gay marriage, abortion, melt into a nexus of hatred so deep that only blood would satisfy?" I was surprised to find myself answering yes. It wouldn't be these states against those states as it was in 1860-65. It would be widespread violence infecting every neighborhood, creating such disorder that our justice system of police and courts and jails would be overwhelmed. Every man for himself. Don't laugh. I've seen the movie, too, and I thought it was a troubling fantasy, just a troubling fantasy.

V was an extraordinary woman. She lived fully every day no matter what came her way. She made friends among every rung of society and protected those she loved. She survived more death than most humans can endure and still found delight in life.she did not believe in slavery, yet she stood behind the very man who led the fight to keep it.

The magnificent fluidity of writing captures a historical moment in civil wartime as seen and experienced by Varina, the lovely wife of Jefferson Davies.
Her lifelong journey of strength, compassion and love is manifest in this graceful story of her life.

Maybe not a Faulkner or Warren effort, but a very fine piece of writing; among the best civil war novels--without having to be one. Varina Davis is a vivid character; as is the occasional walkon, May Chestnut.

Charles Frazier has breathed life into Varina Davis. I knew nothing about the wife of Jefferson Davis before reading Frazier's book. She was a fascinating woman. Her life was full of drama and trauma. Scarlett O'Hara was fictional. Varina was real. This is a fictional work but so much was true. A good read.

a very vivid depiction of the hardships and injustices suffered by the people of the South in the Reconstruction era--a time of anarchy - and explains why Southerners to this day are resentful and distrustful of yankee--it takes many years, even generations, for those memories to fade and those wounds to heal.. Another well-writen story by Frazier.

This book did not live up to my expectations. Perhaps, Cold Mountain was just too good. Varina, wife of Jefferson Davis, is meeting with a young black man on Sundays, filling in his memories of the war. Being a child during the Civil War, his memory has holes in it. Varina and an entourage of displaced Southerners are on the run, homeless. She doesn't know what her future holds. Or what is the circumstance of her much older husband. This picture of the ending of the Civil War is Varina desperately trying to get to Florida and then on to Havana for her safety. This was not a page turner; it never got me involved.

Generally speaking I hate reviews that are in the first person. This one’s no exception, but, I feel the need because my personal interests are relevant: I have been researching Varina Davis for many years for a project. I’ve read every book about her and by her, I’ve read her letters, her surviving newspaper columns (if I were still in academia I’d collect them- they need to be), her husband’s writings, all of the major biographies of her husband and quite a few lesser ones, books by and about her daughter, etc.. She’s been so much a part of my life that as I’m writing this there’s a framed print of the drawing she did of Oscar Wilde on my wall. (As a lifelong southerner I often feel the need to tell people I’m researching Mrs. Jefferson Davis “No no no… really, it’s not veneration of the Confederacy- she was about the last person you’d expect to be Mrs. Jefferson Davis…”.)
When I learned that Charles Frazier was writing a novel based on her I had that panic when you hear that your favorite little out-of-the-way spot in the woods has just been recommended on the most widely read travel site on the Internet: glad somebody else loves it, terrified it that it’s going to go completely commercial and not be the same anymore. I bought the book on audio and in hardcopy the day it was released, read it all the way through, listened to it all the way through, and made lots of notes. I did not want to post my review immediately because I felt it would be unfair, and also because I hate “here’s what I would have done different” reviews even more than book reviews written in the first person. Enough time has passed that I’m not as tempted to do the latter.
So, while I’ll try to be concise, I’m writing the review just of the novel itself. Afterwards I’ll make comments about particular a few of the characterizations and historical events depicted that I think are relevant.
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Generally I liked it, very much, and would have more if I had been reading with a completely unbiased mind. I thought Frazier captured the complexity of the character and of 19th southern women in general. Presentism is the single greatest sin in historical fiction (i.e. characters and dialogue with 21st century mindset and morality in a time and place where NOBODY had that- only time travelers would see the world as we today see it) and Frazier did an outstanding job of avoiding this. One of my favorite moments was when Varina was reliving her courtship with Jefferson and it was very clear to herself and to the reader that his money (encumbered as it was by his brother) was very much a factor in her attraction, and that first one chose a beneficial mate and THEN worked on romance. Also when he dealt with how women of the 19th century had to deal with tragedies that would devastate people today who have the luxury of grieving (I’m speaking of the deaths of children in particular but there were such constant others) yet at the same time had to go on with their lives immediately, I felt “this is a man who understands the times about which he is writing”.
My favorite parts of the novel were all set during the voyage through hell as she and her party made their way through the almost post-apocalyptic South. Frazier really conveyed the impoverished terror of that landscape- it’s amazing she made it as far south into Georgia as she did without being robbed or worse. (The “suicide pistol” is completely true, including Jefferson’s instructions to use it on herself to preserve her honor.) While the journey is fictionalized- the events in the burned out mansion and the hog farm are mostly if not entirely Frazier’s inventions- they worked perfectly to illustrate the very real landscape through which she was traveling. Also, I applaud his depiction of Jefferson’s capture: apologists often write as if the “while wearing a dress” myth was completely baseless (he was not wearing a dress, but he WAS disguised with a woman’s wrap and his wife DID identify him as her mother), and Frazier also shares my own view that Davis deliberately attempted the May 1865 equivalent of “suicide by cop” when captured: I genuinely believe he wanted to go down in a hail of bullets (and, when reviewing the remaining two dozen years of his life, I would not altogether blame him).
The parts with Old Varina were also well done. The saddest thing about the novel is that her reunion with Jim Limber never happened, though I think that if it had it would likely have been much like that. Again with realism, Frazier has the adult Jim remembering things the way a middle aged man likely would remember an emotionally intense year with a foster family and the odyssey through the pine inferno that makes Scarlett’s fictional return to Tara look like an Uber ride at rush hour: images here and there, feelings, an occasional line of dialogue, but not linear and detailed occurrences. His affection for V is based more in 1906 than in 1864-1865 as he realizes in the present what she was like in his past, and again, Frazier does not give her a 21st century woman’s freedom of racism where the child she has taken into her home is concerned. (The story of Jim Limber has been, in my opinion, much romanticized where Jefferson Davis is concerned, but I think the real V was as devastated by his removal as Davis, a self-consumed man to begin with, like was not.)
The faults I found with the novel (other than the ones I have from having spent years researching several of its characters) are mainly sins of omission. I would like to have seen him examine Varina’s relationships with her daughter Winnie more- her greatest devastation was Winnie’s death and it says much about her strength and toughness that she survived that. I would love to have read more about her time in England and Europe- such an odd time because she was simultaneously in genteel poverty and without status and yet in shabby rooms in a strange land with no money she was as close to happy as she would come between her years as a D.C. hostess and her dowager years in New York, about which: I would also like to have dwelt more on her decision to leave Mississippi for Gotham and her years where she was simultaneously the priestess of her husband’s cult (once it was revived after years in which many ex-Confederates hated him as much as northerners) and, like Procopius with the Byzantine court, also the keeper of a secret history, her letters revealing that she saw him completely clearly in retrospect even as she wrote lovingly and nostalgically of her times with him for public consumption.
A nitpick would be when the teenaged cadets are relaying their memories of the Fall of Richmond. While this adds much to the reader who is learning, along with Varina, about the last days of the city and nation her husband fathered, the language was unrealistically detailed and flowery to be the fireside recollections of a traumatized teenager (recalling the fiery undersides of clouds and what not). On the other hand, you get to learn about the always fascinating and amazingly overlooked in southern folklore Judah Benjamin and his escape, so, there’s that. (Skipping ahead briefly to the comments: Benjamin played a MAJOR role in Varina’s life in Europe.)
All things considered, I happily recommend this as one of the best Civil War themed novels I have read in years. It is not one for readers who are looking for a great romance like Cold Mountain or for great battle scenes like the best of the Shaara novels, but whether reminding you how that travel and travail have the same route as you go with Varina on a horrible first class excursion to D.C. for her first tenure there or in the believable tender exchanges of an 80 year old white woman and a 46 year black widower who has a connection to her even if he cannot define it, it is an emotionally true novel and depicts the wartorn landscape of 1865 better than most histories. Thank you, Mr. Frazier.

Photos: the drawing made of Oscar Wilde by Varina Davis at Beauvoir, June 27, 1882.
Also, the volume of his poems he signed to her on the same day.

This narrative makes it sound like Varina was a less than stellar wife and mother. I was soo disappointed. She is never referred to as Varina, but instead just V. Not sure where that came from. Read instead FIRST LADY OF THE SOUTH; the Life of Mrs. Jefferson Davis.

Twenty years after COLD MOUNTAIN, which won the National Book Award, became an international bestseller and adapted into an Academy Award-winning film, Charles Frazier revisits the days of the Civil War era in his latest novel, VARINA. This time the focus is on Varina Davis, the wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, unknowingly being placed on the wrong side of history.

Frazier takes readers through different points in Varina’s life as a mirror to life in the South, starting when she is an old woman in 1906 and meeting James Blake, an African-American schoolteacher seeking her out in hopes that she might be able to shed light on his childhood.

At 18, Varina Howell marries the much older widower Jefferson Davis, a Mississippi landowner with whom she expects a lifetime of security. Instead, after fighting the Mexican-American War, he begins a career in politics and eventually ends up as the president of the Confederacy in 1861. With this, Varina is placed at the center of events during the rise and fall of the Confederacy. As Union forces close in on Richmond, and with her marriage in tatters, Varina and her children --- including Limber Jimmy, a mixed-race boy she adopts --- flee south as fugitives with “bounties on their heads, an entire nation in pursuit,” hoping to find safe harbor in Cuba.

There is no doubt that Frazier’s lyricism is one of the highlights of the novel. However, to the average 21st-century reader, it can come off as verbose but inevitable in trying to imitate 19th-century speech. Even so, the historical research he does blends itself wonderfully into the dialogue.

Varina herself is written as someone who persists and eventually escapes the restrictions of the Confederacy, Southern culture and the expectations of women. Still, she can’t help but look back on her life that has been shaped by bad ideology. James acts as a convincing critic, keeping Varina’s unchecked comments about other people’s reality in balance, even those involving Jefferson himself:

“He did as most politicians do --- except more so --- corrupt our language and symbols of freedom, pervert our heroes. Put a heavy sack of gold in the hand of a man, and a feather-like declaration about freedom in the other. And then an outlaw sticks a pistol in his face and says give me one or the other. Every time --- ten out of ten --- he’ll hug the sack and throw away the ideals. Because the sack’s what’s behind the ideals.”

Outside of this, Varina and James are traversing different time periods, driven to figure out their existences in a radically changed world in the form of shared memories.

Some would say that going back to write about the same setting can be repetitive, but it is up to the right author to place upon it a new angle for looking at a challenging time period. Frazier succeeds in asking the questions pervading the novel --- “How do you escape a situation you’ve been wedded to?” and “How do you deal with the aftermath of a life-changing mistake?” --- without providing an easy answer that the wrong person could easily conjure. For those who are even mildly interested in learning about the Civil War, VARINA will be a fascinating read.

Reviewed by Gabriella Mayer

I've struggled over whether to give this book four or five stars. On the one hand, it's surely the best work of fiction that I've read this year (though it's been a weak year thus far for fiction, IMHO). And it's a wonderfully evocative portrait of a fascinating woman during a fascinating (if upsetting) period in our history; Frazier definitely does have a way of writing about the South, and it's on full display here.

On the other hand, as some other reviewers have pointed out, the portrait of Varina Davis (as in Mrs. Jefferson Davis), her relationships (particularly the relationship to her husband), and other aspects of the book are fuzzy. Maybe that's the price one pays for "evocative", but maybe not. And Frazier overuses metaphors; there were truly times during the book when I found myself thinking "enough!".

So, on balance, I'm giving "Varina" a four- rather than a five-star rating. However, it is a "high" four. It really is a beautifully crafted book that deserves to be read, savored, and taken seriously.

I rarely write reviews but I returned this to the library after only reading 25 pages. The substitution of "V" for the MAIN character's name was off-putting. However that was not enough to return it. I couldn't tolerate Frazier's aversion to quotation marks. It was very difficult to follow dialogues. Quotation marks send an unconscious signal to your brain that someone is talking and you know who is saying what. I had to re-read passages just to follow who was speaking and a hyphen isn't an indicator.

Varina by Charles Frazier tells the story of Varina Davis, wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. From their first meeting, to the violent end of the war and her subsequent flight from the South to the frayed years of Reconstruction and beyond. Now I know what you may be thinking--why would you read a novel about the wife of Jefferson Davis? I asked myself the same question when I picked it up. Curiosity, initially, I suppose. What was life like being married to a traitor? What compelled a wife to stay with her husband during and after something like that?

But here's the thing, this book does not in any way romanticize their marriage, the entire situation, the war, slavery--any of it. In fact, Varina falls very much along the same lines of Cold Mountain in its stark portrayal of violence and the brutality of humanity, as well as the disillusionment with war on both sides.

Varina seems like a series of vignettes jumping back and forth in time, framed by an elderly Varina recounting her story to a black man named James. As a boy, he'd been abandoned and she raised him as her own, despite having slaves herself.  Although James remembers Varina's care of him, he does not sugar coat asking her the hard questions about her place in the war and as the wife of Jefferson Davis. In this way, James acts as the reader, constantly asking why this, why that.

Varina was a woman of her time, like many of her day. There was speculation that she might have been mixed race, but from what I can find, this summation is just a theory. Some speculate may have had Creole ancestry. Her contemporaries often remarked on her dark coloring and somewhat "un-white" features. These aspects of Varina's physical appearance are brought into the novel with other girls teasing her, of adversaries spreading rumors. As far as I know, historically, it was speculation.
As a woman of her time, Varina was eighteen when she married widower Jefferson Davis who was thirty-seven. With few prospects for her future, a land-owning man was her best bet and Davis filled that role. When we talk about the wives of slave owners and Confederate rebels, do we also talk about complicity? Or do we talk about the innocence of these women? I think all of them existed somewhere on that spectrum, not necessarily strictly one or the other. As far as Varina is concerned...I don't know. Even after reading the novel, I still don't have a firm grasp on the character Frazier painted despite her sharp tongue, quick wit, and strength of spirit. But we can't talk about this novel and Varina herself without talking about complicity. At one point in the novel, James asks an older Varina why she took him in and raised him alongside her own son when she and Davis had slaves. Varina said she didn't know, but it later seems as if she did it to prove a point. It wasn't exactly altruistic. The Varina Frazier has constructed is very much a politician alongside her husband, making friends in both the North and the South before and after the war. She is adaptable and a survivor in this way, through charm and strength and intelligence. And yet....and yet. Varina claims she did not support her husband's ideals, and yet she lived her life benefiting from the comfort of them as well as later going down in flames with them. Historically, any wife with a husband who overreaches, who does something (or many things) bad, will most likely go down with him either in the eyes of the law or in the eyes of society--or both. Varina lives inside her husband's world, like many wives of the time. Perhaps taking James in was some sort of personal atonement for her husband's actions?

Like Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier illuminates the brutality on both sides of the American Civil War. And like Cold Mountain, Varina's flight from the South echoes Inman's journey in meeting vividly painted characters along the road. For Varina, the war seems more about survival for herself and her children. She never really has much of a relationship with Davis at all. The reader hardly gets to know him, in fact, as Frazier focuses more on Varina's relationships with her friends and children. And so, if Varina was so distant from her husband, can she too be held accountable for his actions? Should a wife be blamed for her husband's actions? I don't think so, unless she is actively participating in them. And yet, is silence the same as committing the act? Is silence worse? In a historical context, that's a hard question to answer. And yet, there were progressive people of that time who opposed slavery and/or believed in more rights for women. But Varina calls it like she sees it. She's a realist to her core, I think, even cynical.

Frazier's prose is beautiful and unique, although I did not feel as moved by or connected to this story as I did to Cold Mountain. Entire important events are glossed over and brushed aside, perhaps taking the realist and pragmatic approach of Varina herself. At times, I felt the manner of speech sounded too modern. However, a striking line within Varina really sums up all these themes, as well as resonates with things we are experiencing today:

"Choices of convenience and conviction, choices coincident with the people they lived among, following the general culture and the overriding matter of economics, money and its distribution, fair or not. Never acknowledging that the general culture is often stupid or evil and would vote out God in favor of the devil if he fed them back their hate and fear in a way that made them feel righteous."

I feel as if as soon as Varina married Jefferson Davis, she knew her dark fate was sealed along side his, but had no choice but to ride that train with him until the bitter end.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It took me into a time past and showed me a perspective of the Civil War and its aftermath that was different and more interesting than those presented in old dried-up history books.
Charles Frasier writes with a poet's pen to create prose which is often almost poetry.
Varina was a historical figure I knew nothing about, but I feel as though I've watched her become real as the book follows her travels and travails.

This is a revelation of an interesting character usually overlooked and the plight of the citizenry of the south during and after this country's Civil War. It seems odd that a book whose protagonist is the wife of Jeff Davis makes such an eloquent argument for celebrating the people who actually fought the war rather than those who engineered its start.

The book is filled with history you probably have not read elsewhere.

Charles Frazier is a great talent. His first novel Cold Mountain received great praise from reviewers, readers put it on bestseller lists for years, and the novel won a National Book Award.

Varina Davis, born a northerner, was the confederacy's "first lady" having married Jefferson Davis several years before the Civil War's first shots. "Varina" is great--powerful, vivid, and told in many dimensions--as Cold Mountain. A generous book in its examination of a remarkable American's life, holding hard to the thread of Davis's flight, a fugitive from Northern troops.

Enjoyed this book and the first person account of her life. I knew nothing of Varina's story before this reading. Interesting the similarities that Mary Todd Lincoln and Varina's lives were. Enjoyed the book and storyline. Well worth reading.

Our book group didn't care for Cold Mountain. This new book from Frazier is so much better. It left me wanting to read a nonfiction book about Varina Davis. How much was the real Varina; how much was Frazier's creativity? Great subject; well written. My only question is, why doesn't he use quotation marks?

This story of Varina Davis - or V to friends - is a compelling portrait of a remarkable woman with a tragic life and time, who refused to be defined by that tragedy. She lived an unconventional life, more than half of which was spent apart from her husband. She had distinct ideas that differed from many of her contemporaries. And this is the basis of many of the passages - a surprising number of which are humorous or ironic.

Since it is a novel of a real person I give the author credit for staying mostly true to the facts of history. At time he strays for dramatic effect. For example at Jefferson Davis’ inauguration V didn’t drive off in the carriage before his address was over. She wasn’t even in the same state at the time. But it’s easy to overlook such lapses as the writing throughout is so powerful and evocative.

On the plus side, Frazier is a excellent writer, whose prose flows off the page. Even so, unfortunately, even Frazier's enormous writing ability could not save this novel. To begin with, Frazier's continual jumping around amidst different time periods was disconcerting. For example, from one paragraph where Varina might be facing untold dangers during her flight from Richmond in 1865, the following paragraph would continue with a pleasant conversation she was having in a comfortable hotel in 1906. Likewise, as a Civil War buff, I was disappointed that the book never really touched on the war itself; instead, the story focused on Varina's life before and after the war. All in all, I wish the store would allow reviewers to give "half stars".......as this book truly rated 2-1/2 stars.

Wonderfully written novel concerning the life of Varina Davis and her marriage to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Frazier’s descriptions of the reality of slavery and its effect on southern culture draws many parallels to our present condition in a divided nation. I was struck by many quotations concerning the tragic decisions that led to The Civil War.

"Choices of convenience and conviction, choices coincident with the people they lived among, following the general culture and the overriding matter of economics, money and its distribution, fair or not. Never acknowledging that the general culture is often stupid or evil and would vote out God in favor of the devil if he fed them back their hate and fear in a way that made them feel righteous."

Hopefully 21st century America will be better able to reach compromise and avoid a similar disaster. Reading this sensitive story would certainly help many Americans to become better educated and more aware of the consequences of terrible decisions.

I loved Cold Mountain. Nightwoods not so much. Varina was such a chore to get through. Authors like Erik Larsson can take an historic event and make it read like a novel. Frazier's effort here falls far short. It's boring. His style is stilted. I think he coasted in this book. Don't bother with this one.

I cannot overstate the beauty of this story. Frazier immerses you in a different world, passing through various times in the life of a fascinating woman married to Jefferson Davis. I just finished it 5 minutes ago, and cannot wait to learn more about V. What a writer Frazier is!

I purchased this on the strength of Frazier's classic, Cold Mountain. While Frazier is a skilled and highly talented storyteller, I wasn't pleased with this book. First off, Frazier refers to Varina, Mrs. Jefferson Davis, as "V". Is that really what she was called? Varina had a tragic life. She and Jefferson Davis lost most of their children to premature death. Varina & her husband didn't spend much time together at all. This novel focused more on her life after the War, with remembrances written in a flashback mode. Frazier never really fleshed out Varina for me. The loneliness of her marriage, the loss of so many of her children, her life as First Lady of the Confederacy, her disgrace and resurgence afterwards....it was all a bit rote. Well crafted, but this fictional tale left a bit to be desired.

Beautifully written, poetic in nature which represented a strong women caught in a tragic time. A perspective of the past and current (analogy) state of our country’s strife towards racism and economics. In many ways a soul searching book which makes one ponder where we are as a country and where we are destined to go for the future!

Varina' s two selves-- young and old, carefully delineated. Past and present hooked together through the retelling. How time and circumstance shaped her. What a woman. This book gave me much to think about.

Charles Frazier, at his wonderful best, brings us Varina, a southern belle who is also a smart, savvy woman, strong willed and loyal. We follow Varina from her youth into her old age as she lives through the most devastating period of America's history. This is a book to treasure, and recommend to friends and family. As with his other historical novels, I consider Varina a national treasure.