In partnership with Lemuria Books, the Eudora Welty House and Garden will host Charles Frazier, National Book Award-winning author of Cold Mountain, to share his latest book, Varina, on Thursday, April 26, at 5 p.m. Holly Lange, executive director of the Mississippi Book Festival, will engage Frazier in conversation about the book and his work. A book signing will also be held, and guests will be invited to enjoy a reception throughout the evening.
In its review of Varina, USA Today described Frazier as a “superb prose stylist who elevates the historical fiction genre.” His latest work is a gripping historical fiction account of Varina Anne Banks Howell Davis, the second wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. On National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition,” Frazier noted that “after Cold Mountain, I never thought I wanted to write about the Civil War again. But as the past three or four years have shown, it’s not done with us — as a country, as a culture.”
In his interview on BookPage, Frazier commented, “I think of historical fiction as a conversation between the present and the past, and Varina Davis’ life offered me a complex entry point into that dialogue. . . .Her dramatic, problematic life was a narrative situation begging for interpretation and interrogation.
“She calls the {Civil} war . . . ‘the axle of her life.’ Everything turns around it. In a sense, American history and culture do the same,” Frazier added. Click here to read Frazier’s interview about Varina on BookPage.
Photograph of Charles Frazier by Mark Humphrey