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Tax-exempt? Reader's Guide Read an interview | Devotion A novel based on the life of Winnie Davis, Daughter of the Confederacy Yet she was also a cosmopolitan, intellectual "New Woman" who earned a living as a journalist and novelist and traveled with the Joseph Pulitzers. Winnie's adoring followers often misread her steadfast love for her father as unconditional support of the failed Confederacy and the Old South's nostalgic ideals of womanhood. Julia Oliver explores these contradictions from several angles. Winnie speaks from the pages of her journal. Other narrators include Winnie's close friend Kate Pulitzer; her sister, Maggie Hayes; and the love of her life, Alfred Wilkinson, the grandson of a famous abolitionist. From the portrayals of Winnie's romance, her relationships with her parents, her illness and depression, and her ambivalent role as torchbearer for the Lost Cause emerges a young woman whose conflicted existence reflects the tenor of the country following the Civil War and its aftermath. An intimate saga about a remarkable, star-crossed family, Devotion poignantly measures the massive weight of memory on individuals caught up in the sweep of history. Julia Oliver lives in Montgomery, Alabama. She is the author of a collection of short fiction, Seventeen Times as High as the Moon, and the novels Goodbye to the Buttermilk Sky and Music of Falling Water. October 2006 ISBN 082032874X cloth • $24.95 224 pp. • 5.5 x 8.5 in. • 1 b&w photos"Julia Oliver seems like the perfect author to capture the ethereal nature of Winnie Davis-once a living legacy, a complex and talented woman almost eclipsed by her family and burdened with more history than she could bear. This novel about her is long overdue." —Doris Betts, Alumni Distinguished Professor of English (Emerita), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"Ms. Oliver's novel is an elegant, poetic, and deeply moving tribute to the Davis family, and especially to the long-neglected women of that tragic clan. Anyone who loves the story of the South owes her a gesture of thanks." —Howard Bahr, author of The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War"Oliver is at her best in creating a psychological portrait of the Davis family, traumatized by its drastic changes of fortune.. She certainly proves that Davis, whose life began too late and ended too early, was singularly qualified as the ambassador of a lost cause." —Publishers Weekly"A sharp, endearing account of a woman who was well-educated and sensitive to the ironies of the Reconstruction era. . . . Oliver's sure hand is evident on every page of this slim, lyrical novel"-Atlanta Journal-Constitution "The story brings the human element to each member of the [Jefferson] Davis family."-Mississippi Press "A fascinating examination of one of history's most interesting, yet little known figures."-Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser "Oliver delivers in this fascinating historical fiction account of Winnie Davis . . . This sweeping tale of a star-crossed family is indeed one for the ages."-Jim Fraiser, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal "Wow ... an extraordinary, compelling tour de force-wise, hard-nosed, and not the least bejasmined or fraught with Confederate or Victorian nostalgia. In the circus this is called working without a net. Oliver gets things right by getting Winnie's voice right, right from the beginning, and then getting all the rest."-First Draft"This well-researched novel offers much detail of the era and profiles of historic personages."-Kirkus Reviews "Recommended . . . Will appeal to those who like their historical fiction served up in the style of the day."-Library Journal "Oliver offers a serious exploration of American and southern femininity at the end of the Nineteenth Century. . . . The enigmatic first line suggests the way the novel will explore dreams and memory and the way they merge with the more exotic category of premonition. Oliver's use of premonition as a motivating force in Winnie's consciousness is allusive of the gothic and illustrates its importance to Southern American literature. The strangeness of identity in a world ravaged by war and decay, its big houses haunted by the memories of the past, are themes suggestive of Poe and Faulkner. . . . A well-researched novel, Oliver's Devotion offers a history that is rarely told despite the immense fascination with Civil War history and suggests a compelling version of the Davis family-surprisingly progressive and intellectually well-connected."-Foreword Magazine |
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