Authors Wiley Cash and Charles Frazier will meet for conversation about Frazier’s newly released novel, Varina, on Saturday, April 21, at 7 p.m. in the Lipinsky Auditorium at UNC Asheville. The event is free and open to the public, with a signing immediately following.
Frazier, an Asheville native and author of the New York Times bestseller Cold Mountain, has chosen Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis and first lady of the Southern Confederacy, as the subject for his fourth book. Set in 1906, the book casts a look backwards through the seven decades of her fascinating life. “The war is only part of a book that I see as an examination of a complex, flawed character,” Frazier says.
His research for the book included letters and journals, as well as “location scouting,” he says, “for example, driving the route Varina Davis took from Richmond to southern Georgia in the chaotic weeks following the war or walking the streets of Marylebone in London where she lived for a time after the war.”
He became interested in Davis as a subject for historical fiction, Frazier says, when he delved into her life. “I learned that she was highly educated, that her marriage was often difficult, that she made part of her living writing for newspapers later in life.” Among the surprises to him in reading about her was discovering that she was friends with Ulysses S. Grant’s widow, Julia, and that Davis made it known publicly that she thought the right side had won the war.
“I try to draw the reader into the world of each book I write,” Frazier says, “but I also hope readers of Varina will sense the ways in which echoes of that war and its aftermath continue to reverberate in our country.”
Frazier joined author Wiley Cash, currently writer-inresidence at UNCA, for the launch of Cash’s novel, The Last Ballad, in September.
First editions of the book are available by pre-order from Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café. To learn more, visit malaprops.com.