Fiction

Just finished the novel, a really interesting and thoroughly enjoyable story about Jefferson Davis' second wife, Varina Howell. I did not know anything about the woman prior to the read but finished with a good deal of empathy for her. She married Davis as a teenager (he was in his 30s at the time) and felt haunted by his first wife Knoxie. It was a strange marriage to say the least.

As interesting as Varina's story is the backdrop of the Civil War adds to the richness and complexity. The clashing ideologies of the time have an eerie resonance to the current mess we find ourselves in. The book certainly does not romanticize the war nor the bitterness left in the South after it was over. Davis was a hunted, hated and haunted man for the rest of his life, broken physically and financially, yet stubbornly defensive of his political stance.

I'm sure everyone here knows that Frazier also wrote Cold Mountain, an international bestseller that was later turned into an enjoyable movie. I could see this novel going the same way.

Frazier's writing is top-notch. The framing/structure is shaped by a series of interviews/conversations between Varina and a 40-something biracial man, James Blake, who--at the age of eight--happens to have lived in the Davis household a year or two before the war ended. Then he was known as Jimmie Limber (because he was double jointed) and accompanied Varina and her surviving children in their mad dash toward Florida to escape the Federal authorities following the surrender at Appomattox.

Anyway, thought I'd pass this along. If you enjoy historical fiction this is certainly a good choice. And, as I mentioned earlier, it has a strange parallel to what we're witnessing in real time. Nothing new under the sun, as they say.