THERE WAS A SEASON: A Biographical Novel of Jefferson Davis

More a fictional excerpt of that ""biographical novel"" since this deals primarily with the future President of the Confederacy's courtship of his first wife, Sarah Knox Taylor, daughter of another future President of the U.S. (Zachary Taylor) who was then commander of Lt. Davis' regiment at Fort Crawford in the old Michigan territory. Love Story 1830's style, as Taylor bitterly objects to Davis' profession, which he holds accountable for the malarial death of two of his children while on billet in, ironically, the same Mississippi town in which Knoxie will succumb to the same disease a mere three months after her long-awaited wedding. Despite a heavy-handed parallel to Black Hawk, chief of a defeated Indian nation for whom Davis feels much sympathy, and an obviously contrived soldier's discussion about Secession towards which the coxcomb Davis shows unexpected seriousness, the tale manages to retain the reader's somewhat divided attention perhaps because it attempts only what it can achieve.