Frazier’s fourth novel is a richly imagined portrait of Varina Howell Davis (1826-1906), the second wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Born in Natchez and educated in Philadelphia, Varina was a spirited and outspoken woman. She married Davis in 1845. Though she supported her husband, her role as Confederate First Lady was complicated by an ambivalence she couldn’t completely hide. Frazier’s narrative focuses on the war’s end and its aftermath, following Varina as she and her children fled Richmond with a bounty on their heads, then struggled to survive on their own during the two years Davis was imprisoned in Fort Monroe. Frazier’s return to the landscape of his National Book Award-winning debut, Cold Mountain, is a vivid dramatization of a marriage and a nation, both in tatters and working to be whole again.