Beginning ~ with a blue book

"If he is the boy in the blue book, where to start?  He can't expect to recognize her after four decades, and he certainly doesn't expect her to recognize him.  The last time they saw each other he would have been no more than six."

Varina ~ by Charles Frazier, 2018, fiction

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.  With the Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives who have "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.

"Complicity carries consequences."  Hmmm, sounds like that could be a headline for 2021.  I've had this book nearly three years, but I didn't get far into reading it before setting it aside.  For some reason, it called to me this week, so I pulled it off the shelf to read next.

I wrote about this book in 2018 and even included that day's link to Book Beginnings; however, I apparently never got around to posting my link and nobody — absolutely nobody — commented.  How could they, if I didn't link up?  So here I am, trying once again to post about it and actually read it.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click here for today's Mister Linky.