Charles Frazier, whose best-seller historical novel Cold Mountain won the US National Book Award and was adapted into a popular Hollywood film, presents his first Civil War novel, Varina, which can be read as an antidote to Gone With the Wind.

The novel tells the story of Varina Davis, the wife of Confederacy President, Jefferson Davis, and the complex way she looks back on her life, having "done terrible things, lived a terrible way, profited from pain in the face of history"s power to judge, then guilt and loss accrue. . . . Those were times that required choosing a side " and then, sooner or later, history asks, which side were you on?"

As the Washington Post critic noted, "This novel has much to offer those of us who are living through what Carl Bernstein has taken to calling a "cold civil war," but in the end it is a finely wrought novel that will reward rereading. Elegiac without being exculpatory, it is an indictment of complicity without ignoring the historic complexity of the great evil at the core of American history."

Frazier will be in conversation with Charlie Foran, author of Planet Lolita and the comprehensive, critically acclaimed biography: Mordecai: The Life and Times.

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