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.From Julia Oliver’s portrayal of this ambivalent 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.