Devotion re-creates the life of Varina Anne (Winnie) Davis, the youngest child of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America. Winnie was not quite a year old when the family fled the Rebel stronghold of Richmond as the Civil War was ending. Twenty-one years later, Winnie was catapulted into a celebrity she did not seek. As the officially proclaimed Daughter of the Confederacy, she was presented with great fanfare at large conventions of Confederate veterans from Texas to Virginia. In the late nineteenth century, Winnie Davis was known here and abroad as a foremost cultural symbol of the South's Lost Cause.

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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.

FOR DISCUSSION

1. Why do you think the author chose the title Devotion?

2. Winnie's story is told by multiple voices, in a back-and-forth time frame. Does this enrich the texture of the narrative and make it more vivid than if the story had unfolded through a more traditional novelistic approach?

3. This work of period-set fiction is more character driven than many historical novels, which often emphasize description or action. Did you find the tightly focused framework and psychological introspection well suited to the subject?

4. Did Winnie come across as a victim of circumstance or as a free-spirited woman who lived her life as she wished? Was the Winnie Davis portrayed by Oliver a more progressive-minded woman than you thought you would encounter?

5. How do you feel about Winnie's decision to break off her relationship with Alfred Wilkinson? Do you think the reasons she gave to her maid for the split were true or rationalizations?

6. Could Winnie and Alfred have had a good life together?

7. Do Jefferson Davis and his wife come across in this novel as dysfunctional parents or as loving parents who did the best they could by their children, given the times and circumstances?

8. Winnie's sister, Maggie Hayes, seemed to live a relatively normal life outside of the national spotlight. Did the differences in her and Winnie's lives surprise you? How would you describe the relationship they had?

9. How would you describe the relationship between Winnie and her mother?

10. Through her friend Claudia Leveque, Winnie glimpses a world in which blacks and whites had complex and intricate social interactions. In what ways were societal rules about race in Paris and New Orleans different from those in the rest of the United States?

11. Do you think Winnie was unfairly thrust into the role of the "Daughter of the Confederacy"?

12. Did the fascination and even the need in the South to claim Winnie as one of their own foreshadow today's celebrity culture?

To order:
Phone 800-266-5842
Fax 706-425-3061
E-mail books@ugapress.uga.edu

Visit our blog at www.ugapress.blogspot.com
and sign up for E-mail updates about our books and writers.