The American Civil War & Reconstruction
Whistlestop Bookshop’s first store opened in Gettysburg in 1985. Eventually, over 19 years there, our Civil War section grew to be three large wall cases. A disproportionate percentage of it, naturally, was about the battle of Gettysburg and biographies of those who fought there. In addition to this book selling experience, my southern upbringing and Army family life created a lifelong interest in the War Between the States and all of its complexities. It is an understandable national obsession, considering how the first half of our nation’s history contributed to its ferocity, and the second half of our history has been the struggle to live with and understand the consequences.
Varina
Varina
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 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, Virginia, 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.