What do you most want to preserve?

Fortunes may be made in boardrooms and estates planned in law offices, but legacies are something else altogether. Legacies are the ethos of an individual or an institution: the thing that is the most nuanced, the most significant, and therefore the most precious. Legacies are best captured in books. Books that can be held in our hands, read on a warm evening, gifted to friends, passed down to grandchildren, and kept safe for generations. Capturing someone’s legacy is the ultimate gift. It is also a proven way to safeguard wealth.

Award-winning author Varina Willse works intimately with families to create legacy books of exceptional quality and craftsmanship. As an author of four books of narrative nonfiction, Varina is adept at developing layered portraits of individuals and the networks of people that surround them. Conducting interviews and research, she weaves together what she hears, finds, and intuits to yield works that are at once accessible, entertaining and evocative with special attention given to organization and the flow of content. Her books have been heralded as exceptional literary titles within this niche genre.

Home To Us: Six Stories of Saving the Land [2012]

The Land Trust for Tennessee, which was created in 1999 to help save the state’s richly historic landscapes from being devoured by development, has just hit the 65,000-acre mark. That is—in just over a single decade—the Land Trust for Tennessee has helped landowners and agencies in the state protect 65,000 acres of land, making it a leading force for preservation across the country and a champion of saving land in the South. In order to promote and celebrate this critical work, award-winning photographer Nancy Rhoda and writer Varina Willse, along with prominent editor John Egerton, have teamed to create a rare kind of book that appeals to anyone who cares about land.

Home To Us: Six Stories of Saving the Land offers six in-depth portraits of families who have made the decision to protect their land. Though regionally specific to Middle Tennessee, the scope of the book’s meaning and relevance extends more widely to the South and to the nation as a whole. Ultimately, it is a tapestry of stories—woven beautifully through interlacing words and images—that explores the timeless and essential connection between people and the physical environments they call home. The fundamental question driving the work is, Why do certain people decide to protect their land? The initial answer is that these people believe that there is nothing more valuable, not for their children and grandchildren nor for the nation as a whole. They choose their legacy to be in the form of hills that please the eye and soil that yields food and grasses that nourish wildlife. To read this book is to meet and get to know these wonderful people. It is to comprehend what motivates a human to be forward thinking and selfless in a world too often defined by instant gratification and greed. It is to appreciate the land around us and the regular folks who have secured its existence. And, it is to come ultimately to the same understanding that they have: The land is bigger than us. It’s bigger than money. It’s bigger than time. And it has to be protected

Daylight Along the Eaves [2016]

In 1693, a young man named Charles Rodes sat down to pen a letter to his cousin back in England. Wild in his youth, Charles had been sent to the Colonies to mend his ways, and the letter he wrote proves that he did indeed sober to the responsibilities of adulthood but that he nevertheless felt indelibly connected to his past and his family. To his cousin, Charles wrote the simple but meaningful words, “I shall ever Remember from whome I came.”

Over 300 years later, this sentiment still resonates for the descendants of Charles Rodes. It resonates so deeply in fact that one descendant, H. Rodes Hart Jr., commissioned three years of genealogical research to unearth the history of his family so that he, and others of his same heritage, might know to the fullest extent possible “from whome” they came. That genealogical research became the basis for this book, which traces not only the Rodes ancestry but also the Hart, Bigelow, and Ingram lineages—the four branches of the family that merged when H. Rodes Hart Sr. married Patricia Ingram in 1958.

The book’s title derives from the 1912 autobiography of Patricia’s great grandfather O. H. Ingram, who described the way the cracks in a boarding house ceiling let in the frigid Wisconsin air but also the morning sunlight. In the same way, Daylight Along the Eaves: The Stories of Our Familystrives to let in the truths of the past, both dark and bright, so that the end result is an honest portrayal of who the family is, including what they have overcome and what they have accomplished. Offering a rich history of each branch of the family, Daylight Along the Eaves also gives an authentic look at the way wealth, luck and loss can impact all of us—and the way loyalty to family can make us stronger.

To Share & Share Alike [2019]

To Share and Share Alike tells the story of the Williams family as it extends back into its distinct branches: Duncan, Williams, Walton and Shearin on the paternal side and Scarbrough, Skinner, Evans, and Williams on the maternal side. To trace the journey of these ancestors from immigration to present day is to trace the journey of a developing nation. The values reflected in these men and women are the values essential to the formation of our country: honest hard work, persever­ance, and the strength of community.

Ultimately, this is a story of dirt to desk and—inevitably—back home to dirt again. It is also a story of country to country club, of “generic” to affluent, though those distinctions don’t much matter. The deep roots that literally ground this family in southwest Tennessee have given nourish­ment to a life rich in grit and gratitude. And, they have fed a generosity—both of resources and of spirit—that is reflected in the book’s title. The phrase is taken from the will of Charles Duncan, a pioneer settler of Tennessee who, when he passed away in 1818, left his precious stake in this new country to his sons and daughters “to share and share alike.” And so it goes with those descendants of his still living.

Big Jack [2024]

Big Jack is an intimate portrait of B.F. Lowery, known better as Big Jack, a nickname that suits both his stature and his larger-than-life presence. A Lumbee Indian, Jack grew up in segregated North Carolina where water fountains came in sets of three: Whites, Coloreds, and Indians. A fearless champion of inclusivity, Jack fought the KKK with his fists in college, stood down angry mobs during the Civil Rights Movement as a police officer, and represented countless accused men and women during his six-plus decades as a criminal defense attorney. He served in public office, both in the House of Representatives and as Mayor of his adopted hometown of Lebanon, TN. With a keen mind for business, Jack was also involved in the growth of two multibillion-dollar companies, LoJac and Cracker Barrel. He has made it big and lived even bigger.

Though Jack’s legacy could easily be in the accolades he has received or the wealth he has amassed, it isn’t. Rather, Jack’s legacy resides in the relationships he has formed and the change that he and others have been able to effect in the communities in which they live, from the town of Lebanon to the state of Tennessee, from the courtroom to the conference room, and beyond. In this way, the story of Jack’s life is the story of passion and perseverance and progress, not just his individually but ours collectively. The book weavesJack’s telling of his life experiences with reflections and tales from those who love him so that what emerges is an honest portrait of an esteemed man and a powerful story of reconciliation, with plenty of laughs and adventure along the way.

Overview of the Process

Editorial Phase I. Content Discovery
Interviews, Collection & Review of Existing Documents, Photo Archiving, Research

Editorial Phase II. Content Development
Organizational Overview, Further Research, Drafting, Image Placement, Internal Revisions

Editorial Phase III. Content Review
Client Review, Revisions, Title, Front & Back Matter

Editorial Phase IV. Design Templates
Production Elements, Dust Jacket Designs, Page Templates, Client Approval

Editorial Phase V. Design Development
Interior Layouts, Copyediting, Final Client Approval

Production
Dummy Review, Proof Review, Printing, Shipping