No matter what piques the interests of Cornelia Nixon, she pursues it with gusto, be it writing a book, riding a horse or eating a dill pickle at Saul's in Berkeley. Her new novel, "Jarrettsville," is proof of her passion. She spent eight years researching and writing the first version of this tale, which takes place in a Maryland hamlet around the time of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.

"Jarrettsville" opens with a young woman shooting a man — over and over again, at close range — in full view of a hotel full of witnesses. The rest of the book, narrated by a dozen involved parties, explains how this may have happened. It has to do with a woman scorned, but also touches on everything from miscegenation to the fierce emotions of the men who've just returned from fighting in the Civil War (on both sides).

Nixon's enthusiasm for the tale dates back to when she was 16 and was told she was related to the murderess, Martha Cairnes, who shot her lover, Nicholas McComas, in cold blood. "It was a family secret, that Martha was a murderer. But she was famous; she became a celebrity, and her name is even on the 1870 map in the front of the book," Nixon says over a bagel with lox.

The family also lied about their affiliation during the Civil War. "The myth I grew up with was that they all fought for the North," Nixon says. "That was true of some of them, but others were fighting for the South."

The little town of

Jarrettsville is in Harford County, bordering Pennsylvania. Nixon discovered in her research that President Lincoln, knowing the Confederate-leaning Maryland legislature would vote to secede from the Union, locked them up in Fort McHenry and sent troops to occupy Maryland for four years.

"What a bold man he was! You think of him as this gentle guy who wrote the Gettysburg address," Nixon says. "But man, he knew how to do a war. He just pre-empted the legal process in the state of Maryland. I was astonished and fascinated."

Nixon, 54, is familiar with the book's landscape because she spent summers at the Jarrettsville family farm as a child. Her mother was an English teacher, which had much to do with her daughter's decision to become an author at age 6. She was always writing stories, even a newspaper for her dolls. "My sister and I had an elaborate narrative for the dolls. I think it was practice for novel writing," she says.

The family moved from the East Coast to Marin County when Nixon's father was posted at Fort Mason. She surfed in Bolinas, and ultimately decided to go to UC-Irvine so she could surf in Southern California. Afterward, she says, "I was going to be Hemingway. I took my backpack, my notebook and my fountain pen and went to Europe. I didn't know what I know now, which is Hemingway had a trust fund. That made it a little easier for him to sit around in cafes all day, writing. I tried. I wrote a novel in French, longhand."

Eventually, she returned home and got her MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Because her professors found her literary criticism better than her fiction, she got a fellowship for four years at UC-Berkeley for a doctorate in literary criticism. "Sometimes I still bemoan all the time I lost doing that, but my husband always pointed out to me I would never have become the writer I am today if I hadn't gone and done the discipline of that Ph.D."

Nixon met her husband, poet Dean Young, when she was teaching at Indiana University and he was getting his MFA. They dated just six months before marrying in 1983. Young is her first reader of all her work. He's the one who suggested she start with short stories; her "The Women Come and Go" won a first place O'Henry Award in 1995. The story is in her 2000 collection of interrelated short stories, "Angels Go Naked." Her first book of short stories, "Now You See It," came out in 1991.

Young's Pulitzer Prize finalist poem, "Elegy to a Toy Piano," is framed and mounted on a blue wall in their light-filled living room in North Berkeley. Other clues to the couple's interests are scattered about — colorful ribbons Nixon won in horse show competitions, a pile of New Yorker magazines on a radiator, the new Lorrie Moore book, "A Gate at the Stairs," balanced on the headboard (Moore is a friend). An oval frame houses an antique photo of Nixon's family, including her great-grandmother Rebecca Adelia Robinson, cousin to Martha Cairnes.

"Jarrettsville" was originally called "Martha's Version," and was from just her perspective. All the prospective publishers said the same thing: They couldn't figure out why she was in love with Nicholas McComas, and they couldn't figure out why he wouldn't marry her.

Nixon, who teaches writing at Mills College, says she is grateful that version wasn't published. "There's no such thing as an accurate portrait of reality from one point of view. Each person's perception is limited. You need more angles to get the whole picture."

Now, she says, "I've never been happier with a character than I am with Nick. He just came out of nowhere with that opening line, 'I was not a learned man. Rumors of knowledge, that's what I had.' I really knew who he was. I just love him."

For her next book, Nixon is exploring the motivation that got her to UC-Irvine all those years ago. "Beach Bunny," is about surfing. An early version had some editors calling it two books. "I'm separating the Siamese twins," she says with a grin.

As always, she seems enthusiastic.

Lynn Carey runs the Times Book Club. She can be reached at timesbookclub@yahoo.com