Varina A novel

DANCING BEARS: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny, by Witold Szablowski. (Penguin, paper, $16.) This utterly original book by a Polish journalist describes how Bulgarians earned money by making captive bears dance, then shifts to a farreaching conversation about the meaning of freedom. BENEATH A RUTHLESS SUN: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found, by Gilbert King. (Riverhead, $28.) In his latest book, King returns to the corrupt Jim Crow-era Florida sheriff he wrote about in his 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner, "Devil in the Grove." Here, the victims of his brutality include a mentally disabled white teenager, falsely accused of rape. THE PARKING LOT ATTENDANT, by Nafkote Tamirat. (Holt, $26.) An Ethiopian-American teenager living in a mysterious island commune narrates this impressive debut novel, recalling her childhood in Boston and her entanglement there with a charismatic parking-lot attendant and his possibly sinister schemes. VARINA, by Charles Frazier. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Returning to the Southern landscapes of his best-selling novel, "Cold Mountain," Frazier uses his new novel to revive one of the almost forgotten figures of 19th-century American history, the much younger and much conflicted wife of Jefferson Davis. THE SPARSHOLT AFFAIR, by Alan Hollinghurst. (Knopf, $28.95.) For a man in the 1950s, gay sex was a scandal that led to a prison term. His son comes to maturity in a different era, one in which he can take a legal husband. Hollinghurst's novel traces the private and public twists of this process. SOMETHING WONDERFUL: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution, by Todd S. Purdum. (Holt, $32.) Not long ago, these progenitors of virtually all modern musical theater were widely considered dull, stodgy middlebrows. A political writer by trade, Purdum demonstrates, through a dual portrait of the brilliant songwriters, just how wrongheaded that was. TWO SISTERS: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey Into the Syrian Jihad, by Asne Seierstad. Translated by Sean Kinsella. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) This absorbing account reconstructs the saga of Muslim sisters who fled their home in Norway to join ISIS, and of the distraught father who went after them. THE WOMAN'S HOUR: The Great Fight to Win the Vote, by Elaine Weiss. (Viking, $28.) After Congress passed the 19 th Amendment in 1919, ratification was required in 36 states, and all eyes were on Tennessee. Weiss's view of the proceedings is panoramic and juicy. UNCLE SHAWN AND BILL AND THE ALMOST ENTIRELY UNPLANNED ADVENTURE, by A. L. Kennedy. (Kane Miller, paper, $5.99; ages 7 to 10.) In this delightfully cracked first children's book from a well-regarded novelist, a man helps a badger flee danger. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Frazier reprises his Cold Mountain success, this time focusing on a less familiar historical figure from the Civil War: Varina, wife of Confederate president Jefferson -Davis. Varina's unconventional opinions and attitudes, contemporaneously perceived as less than fully enthusiastic toward her husband's lost cause, probably accounts for this gap in popular knowledge. Frazier tells her story in the form of an imagined oral memoir, in which she recounts her story to a black man, "-Jimmie Limber," whom she rescued from the streets of Richmond, VA, when he was abandoned as a toddler. Focusing on events following Lee's surrender when she and her children fled the Confederate capital, and bouncing between pre- and postwar events, this narrative approach succeeds after a slow start. The unveiling of Varina's sad story piques the reader's curiosity. Much of what Frazier imagines is consistent with the incomplete historical record surrounding Varina, and he fills in the blanks to reveal a powerful personality that, while of her times, has much to say to us today in respect of how the impact of great events on individuals can affect the history of those events. VERDICT Highly recommended for general readers as well as anyone interested in American history. [See Prepub Alert, 10/5/17.]-Vicki Gregory, Sch. of Information, Univ. of South Florida, Tampa © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.