Hi all!  Fresh off the presses, two great Winnie book reviews!  See below!  More to come…

Also make sure to listen to the recent podcast on Winnie which you can click on and listen to at the bottom of my website under “Press.”

Thanks!  :)

Review by Guy Gugliotta, author of Freedom’s Cap:  The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War:  (Review from April 4, 2014):

“Daughter of the Lost Cause is the poignant story of Winnie Davis, one of the last casualties of the Civil War. Destined by birth to carry the torch of the Confederacy, it was an obligation she never asked for but could never refuse. Heath Lee tells this tale with simple elegance and matter-of-fact sensitivity. She makes you understand that neither of Winnie’s two worlds–the languor of the Mississippi Gulf Coast or the hustle of downtown New York–would ever bring her peace.”

Review:  Booklist:  (Review from April 4, 2014):

Born in 1864 during the death throes of the Confederacy, Varina Anne “Winnie” Davis, youngest child of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, quickly and irrevocably became a living, breathing representation of the old South.  Lost causes need symbols in order to perpetuate and animate their ossifying mythologies, and Winnie never fully escaped her fate as both her family and genteel southern society confined her to a time capsule, where her public image inevitably trumped her private life.  Attempting to carve out her own life as both a professional writer and a woman intent on unifying North and South, she was eventually thwarted in love after she became engaged to the grandson of a prominent Northern abolitionist. Dying at age 33, she became a forever-young icon, revered yet never fully appreciated or understood by the Confederate Civil War generation.  Lee makes the most of Davis’ brief life and accomplishments by grounding her subject firmly in historical context.