Varina

Book 4 of my 2019 Reading Challenge

read from January 5 - 11

Varina

by Charles Frazier

Summary (via the book jacket)
published 2018

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.

My Opinion

3 stars

I liked the writing and it held my interest but I also wasn't emotionally invested so I'm neutral about it overall.

This line spoke to me and I find it especially relevant in this time: "If every generation helps the next take one step up, imagine where we might all be someday."  I also loved the line, "Remembering doesn't change anything - it will always have happened.  But forgetting won't erase it either."

A Few Quotes from the Book

"Children don't judge their own lives. Normal for them is what's laid before them day by day. Judgement comes later."

"Fame. All it means is, people who don't know one true thing about you get to have opinions and feel entitled to aim their screeds your way."