A New VIB!

Announcing the Tattered Cover's second V.I.B. choice: Jarrettsville by Cornelia Nixon. This is a paperback original, which means that we get all of the power this novel has to offer, only at a smaller price!


Jarrettsville takes place in Northern Maryland, just as the Civil War has officially ended. It is a love story. It is the story of a murder and subsequent trial. It is unlike anything else I have read. Rebel sympathies have not faded with the end of the war. Southern values have not changed overnight. Into this world comes Martha Cairnes, a modern-for-her-time woman who falls in love with Nick McComas, a neighbor whose family helped fleeing slaves during the war. They fall in love, but are held back from fully realizing their love from their families and societal pull. It is a tragic story, told from multiple points of view. This book will leave folks with much to talk about.

But don't just take my word on it, Cathy Langer, our lead buyer was the person who got me to read it, and here's her review:

Cornelia Nixon's novel begins in 1869 as Martha Jane Cairnes murders Nicholas McComas in
front of many witnesses in Jarrettsville, Maryland, a town just below the Mason-Dixon
Line and a microcosm of America in the years following the Civil War. This tale of two
lovers and why it ends so badly for them is the story of neighbor fighting neighbor, old
customs and quarrels dying hard, passion, friendship, and the complicated relationships
between whites and blacks, all told exquisitely.

--Joe