"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"--

The first volume of this Biography has received flattering reviews from critics on the staff of the Nation, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Boston Transcript and the London Times. Both Gamaliel Bradford and William E. Dodd have been warm in their commendation of the second volume. In this volume Mrs. Rowland had written a charming and accurate historical narrative of the Southern Confederacy in which the wife of Jefferson Davis played a part that holds and fascinates the reader. The narrative written in an easy, graceful yet frank and forceful style, places the work among the year's important contributions to American biography.

A wounded Confederate soldier treks across the ruins of America in this National Book Award–winning novel: “A stirring Civil War tale told with epic sweep.” —People Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves. His journey across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign. Meanwhile, the intrepid Ada is trying to revive her father’s derelict farm and learning to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away. As it interweaves their stories, Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic odyssey, hugely powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving.

The Land Trust for Tennessee set out in 1999, in the words of its mission statement, “to preserve the unique character of Tennessee's natural and historic landscapes and sites for future generations.” In 2012, near the end of its fourteenth year, the Nashville-based non-profit organization had completed more than two hundred individually-crafted legal agreements with property owners in fifty-plus Tennessee counties, assuring that their designated tracts of land – about 75,000 acres in all – will be safeguarded forever. These family farms, native forests, mountains, waterways and historic sites, which together bolster the state's image as one of the greenest and most picturesque in the nation, will be perpetually sustained for the pleasure and benefit of all. To explain how these diverse conservation covenants work is a complex task, since each separate case is its own story, with its own narrative and cast of characters. Recognizing these challenges, The Land Trust decided to select a few “typical” partner-families and present their stories in singular detail through the pictures of photo-documentation Nancy Rhoda and the carefully crafted verbal profiles of writer Varina Willse. Home to Us: Six Stories of Saving the Land invites us onto the ground and into the lives of the Crunks, the Neals, the Fishers, the Pierces, the Knights and the Ozburns – Tennesseans who have set aside their property to be preserved as a legacy to the future. Home to Us goes to the heart and soul of a universally recognized bond that connects all people to the places they call home.

Traces the vivid lives of the wives of Theodore Weld, Jefferson Davis, and Ulysses S. Grant to demonstrate how their personal beliefs were overshadowed by their high-profile husbands before wartime brought them to the foreground.

"The Broken Mirror" is a collection of memories about a special place, a special time, and some very special people. It is an unofficial history of the time spent in the small North Carolina towns of Willow Springs, Myatt's Mill, Mount Pleasant, Panther Branch Township, and Varina-Fuquay. Decades have passed. But the old houses, dilapidated barns, and broken mirrors that lay in the rubble have a lot to say about that era and the people to whom they once belonged. Now abandoned, they serve as reminders that life is as much about yesterday as it about today. The author's exploration of these secret places hidden in plain sight have revealed amazing treasures and valued memories. The artifacts were left behind for others to find. But the stories that those old gems told were taken and relayed in the pages of "The Broken Mirror." These are the memories of a time long gone, uncluttered by today's complicated lifestyles. With the world growing more technological and people more distant, this book serves as a retreat to a simpler time where conversation was king and the corner store was the center of the universe. The people who shared their stories in "The Broken Mirror" are living encyclopedias. They may forget where they left their car keys, but they can remember every shop on Main Street, who owned each one, and all of their relations. They can tell you about fairs and picnics and school dances like they happened just yesterday. Whether you are from North Carolina or any one of the other states that make up our great country, you will find laughter, wisdom, and comfort in these memories - sweet and bitter. The people who walked the streets of these old towns saw hardships and overcame them. They believed in the beauty of community. Now you are invited to become a neighbor. Escape into their world and fall in love with the stories chronicled on the pages of "The Broken Mirror."