Southern Belle Varina finds her prospects of marriage becoming severely compromised by her father's debts so marriage to older widower Jeff seems like a good idea. Jeff is building a plantation but after becoming a hero in the Mexican War he turns his hand to politics and Varina has to learn to be a political wife. Jeff is Jefferson Davis and Varina is the First Lady of the Confederate President during the Civil War. After the defeat Jeff sends Varina and the family away and they travel across the South with enemies chasing them all the way.
Told as a memoir dictated to a former member of the household, this is fictionalised biography of a real-life character, Varina Davis, someone at the epicentre of the Civil War. In this book Varina is a complex and wilful character, her marriage seeing ups and downs and the excitement of the family's flight across the defeated South is an excellent juxtaposition to the genteel life of a society hostess who never quite fits in.

American Tragedy

I am a big fan of Charles Frazier’s novels and jumped at the chance to read this one. I was not disappointed. In an immensely complex structure, Frazier tells the story of Varina Davis, wife of the first and only president of the Confederate States. We read of her highly educated childhood and her wastrel father, her marriage to the older, colder Jefferson Davis and her life in the backwoods Davis estate, her youthful years in Washington as wife of a rising congressman, her attitudes towards slavery and the Confederacy, and the best and most exciting part of the novel, her flight from Richmond on the defeat of the South and her attempt to escape to Cuba. This last part reminded me strongly of the author’s Cold Mountain with its scenes of a lawless and shattered Georgia. Varina’s love of Classical literature enables her to see the whole disaster as a sort of Greek tragedy transferred to the American people.

Not least of the pleasures for this reader (although not everyone will agree) was the novel’s narrative structure with its stories within stories, its multiple threads and time zones. I found this a hugely rewarding read.

Hmm not sure what to say! Struggled with this book, due to the skipping back and forth of the chapters. Varina marries with all good intentions as the second wife of the much older Jefferson Davis. Unfortunately he follows a career in politics and she becomes the First Lady of the Confederacy. They had a troubled marriage due to opposing beliefs and separation and Varina reflects on this in discussions later in her life with Jimmy, a mixed race child who she adopted.

The first half of the book tells of Varina's flight to Florida, interspersed with tales of her early life and marriage. I enjoyed this part of the book as she came across as a spirited character in interesting times. I did find the style a little disconnected and this was not helped by the physical layout of the page, although I do appreciate this maybe because it was an early approval ebook.

About half way through the book something happened, a new character called Laura was introduced. Now I know it is the summer holidays and I maybe I am used to a quick nap whenever the fancy takes me, maybe I did fall asleep just as the crucial paragraph regarding Laura came up - but I don't have the foggiest what was going on. Having woken myself up, had a bracing cup of tea and given myself a stern talking to I reapplied myself to the book. But then that thing happened, you know when you skim a few paragraphs to see if it gets back to the interesting bit? The few paragraphs become a few pages, then you have a quick look at the other books you could be reading and you have to admit that the passion has gone, you can no longer be bothered, in fact painting the house or emptying the compost bin are indeed important jobs that need to be done. So I suppose what I am saying is that the first part of the book held my interest, not so much the second half.