In a tumultuous time, a complicated woman

Born in 1826 to William and Margaret Howell of Natchez, Miss. , Varina was one of seven children, and early on showed independence, courage, and a love of learning, inherited from and nurtured by her mother. Her father went bankrupt in the Panic of 1837. So, although the family boasted rich relatives and Varina was educated in Philadelphia, she approached maturity at considerable disadvantage.

When her father's former business partner, Joseph Davis, invited her to his plantation, she met Joseph's older brother, Jefferson, who had lost his young wife to malaria . They fell in love -- he with her youth and vivacious conversation, she with his good looks, his sophistication (he was 17 years her senior), and his life of "a quintessential Southern gentleman." Although the path of this marriage would grow rough, it began as a love match and would lose its fervor only when Jeff turned elsewhere for comfort .

Since Cashin candidly reveals the many humiliations that Varina endured during the course of her marriage, "First Lady of the Confederacy" is sometimes painful to read. How, one wonders, can such a lively and curious woman be so loyal to this rigid, often arrogant man? But if one accepts Varina's rules one can only admire her good grace.

After her first child was born in 1852, Jeff was recruited as secretary of war, and the family moved to Washington, a city Varina knew and loved. She had three more children, read widely, and was known as a "cultivated woman."

But she was also conflicted. In her heart she was pro-Union, and her ambivalence about the right of the South to secede would create a problem for her until her death, in 1906. Moreover, she had known almost immediately that Jeff would never be her soul mate -- he was far too egocentric and ambitious -- and that, too, would cause her increasing sorrow .