This novel is the second in Jakes' Civil War trilogy. Love and War picks up the lives of the Main and Hazard families right where North and South left off. The Mains are rice planters in South Carolina. The Hazards are steel manufacturers in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. The Civil War is just beginning. Brett Main has just married Billy Hazard. The families are linked not just by their marriage, but by the strong friendship forged between Orry Main and George Hazard while attending West Point. This bond transcends even the worst moments of the War as the families reach out and help one another on numerous occasions. In the Afterword, Jakes compares his writing of this novel to Gone With the Wind. He admits to loving the story, but laments the fact that the slaves are depicted as content to be slaves, and also with comic relief - social values which really don't hold up any longer. Even the war is depicted without too much blood and guts, mostly referred to on cue cards. The only true impact of suffering is the depot scene showing a seemingly endless sea of wounded men. This novel shows that war is pure hell. Particularly notable is the change in Charles Main through the book as what he witnesses and experiences changes him. The evolution is not swift or abrupt, but very gradual. It make it totally believable. The battlefields are described in great detail giving the reader the feeling that they are experiencing it right along with the characters. Everything in Jakes' writing rings so true that I felt as if I were reading a biography of these two families. Instead of focusing on the notable parts of the War, such as the battle at Gettysburg, Jakes takes us to Carolina and Liverpool shipyards, Libby Prison, Confederate encampments, and the politicking in both Washington D.C. and Richmond, VA. This gives the novel more depth than focusing just on the more infamous parts of the War. Neither side is exempt from special interests or those who seek to profit on the blood of others. Both families have people who are up to no good. In the case of Ashton Main - Brett and Orry's sister - she is inherently evil here. While trying to help her husband rise politically in Confederate circles, she joins with a group at first attempting to take control of the government. In the process she almost destroys Orry's marriage and his good name, is responsible for the drowning of her nephew, and still carries a great deal of anger at being rejected by Billy Hazard in favor of her sister. Of course no Jakes novel would be complete without the evil man harboring a grudge due to some slight years ago. In here it is Elkanah Bent. Bent seems to spend the majority of the novel scheming at how to get back at the two families, all the while managing to mess up every chance he has in his own life. Much is made of his parentage here, but though it is hinted at, it is never revealed. It is one bit of frustration I really would have like to have been resolved. In this novel, slavery is not depicted as a happy existence. As the war presses on, many of the slaves at the Mains' plantation run off. Orry's wife Madeline goes to great lengths to try and make it better for them, even beginning a school. Her belief is that they will be freed and need their education. This is a believable way to show the feelings of loyalty some of the slaves - and freedmen who live at the plantation - have for the family. In the North, Brett works with black children at an orphanage started by George's wife, Constance. Having the opportunity to interact outside of the plantation with the black children and adults causes Brett to rethink her own beliefs she has had all her life. It also gives her a good direction and sense of purpose, rather than sitting in a house through the whole novel worried about her husband. The families are not exempt from tragedy. Several lives are lost. There is nothing pretty about the four and a half years contained in the novel. Jakes has gone to great lengths to write a well-researched and non-glamorous view of this terrible war. If you've never read it, it's definitely worth a look.
If you've only seen the mini-series by the same name, you're missing out on quite a lot. There is more of everything in John Jakes' novel North And South: more characters, more intrigue, more story, more history. In studying American History in school, and the Civil War in particular, we are often given clinical reasons behind the war. I always found it hard to understand the climate of the times. Jakes translates it well in this novel. Beginning almost 20 years before the start of the Civil War, North And South tells us the story of two families: the Mains of South Carolina, and the Hazards of Pennsylvania. The Mains are rice planters who own slaves. Though not harsh slave-owners, they nevertheless treat their people as property. Clarissa and Tillet are the parents, Cooper, Orry, Ashton and Brett are their offspring. Cooper is the eldest son, but he frequently clashes with his father, especially on the subject of slavery. Instead of managing the family's rice plantation, Mont Royal, he begins his own very successful shipping company in Charleston. Orry wanted a career as a soldier. He attends West Point after Cooper turns down the appointment to reach his dream. Fate dictates that he ends up managingMont Royal - a consuming task especially after he fires the overseer. He has qualms about the slavery issue, but also knows how much they rely on the labor to have a successful crop each year. He also is realistic enough to be very nervous about how the slaves would act towards their former masters should they ever be freed. He is a loner, who's one true love is another man's wife. Ashton is power hungry politically. Having been cursed to be born a woman rather than a man, she manipulates men into doing her dirty work. She is powerfully jealous of her sister and anyone else who manages to have any good fortune and happiness. She marries James Huntoon, a rising star in the South's political situation, figuring this is how she will become powerful as well. Brett is the more practical sister. She takes over helping Orry manage the plantation after their father dies and their mother turns feeble. She asserts her independence, yet is much more a lady than her sister. She falls for Billy Hazard, but will the love they have overcome the turbulent times? Charles Main is the ruffian cousin who lives with the family after his parents are killed. Blessed with incredible good looks, he manages to cruise by in life until challenged to a duel. It is only then that he learns just how much the family - and Orry in particular - care about him. He eventually lives Orry's dream of having a soldier's career. After he attends West Point, he battles Indians on the Texas frontier and distinguishes himself in the eyes of his commander, Robert E. Lee. The Hazards are iron-masters in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. William and Maud are the parents, Stanley, Virgilia, George, and Billy are their offspring. Stanley is much like Ashton Main in that he aligns himself with rising stars in the new political world, hoping to come up a winner with an appointment in Washington. He fails miserably in his attempts at running the family's iron works, simply because he is too cautious and afraid to take risks. His wife is a shrew who pushes him into doing things against his own better judgment. George attends West Point but strictly for the education. He intends to give the service only the four years he is required to give. For better or worse, he decides to serve with his friend Orry, meaning that he sees battle in the war over Texas. He brings home an Irish-Catholic bride from Texas, who is not accepted easily into the Pennsylvania society. Since he has much more vision than his brother, George ends up in charge of the Iron Works. Virgilia is a staunch abolitionist who uses any opportunity she gets to make trouble for anyone she perceives as the enemy. She falls for one of James Huntoon's slaves while in South Carolina and helps him escape. Later he is killed in the Harper's Ferry incident. This only serves to reinforce her deep hatred of anyone and anything southern. Billy initially falls for the wild Ashton Main, but later turns to Brett when he sees her as being the more stable of the two. He attends West Point with a year's difference between himself and Charles Main and enters the Engineering Division where he hopes to save enough to support himself and Brett. Billy proposes just before Lincoln is elected, setting in motion a great rift in the country. Can their love overcome the rift? The two families' futures become intertwined when Orry and George attend West Point Military Academy together and become fast friends. Along the way, they make friends who's names are familiar in history: Robert E. Lee, George McClellan, Tom Jackson, and George Pickett. Jakes intersperses these characters from history so well with the fictional characters in the novel that it gives the reader a sense of what the time was like. I have always enjoyed history, and North And South is an excellent combination of the history of these turbulent times as well as a wonderful fictional story. The tension mounts throughout the novel as the tension is building in the country. Can these two families have their friendship survive? At times it doesn't seem likely. Despite their own reservations about the peculiar institution of slavery, the Mains do not like outsiders coming in and criticizing their way of life. Likewise, the Hazards have trouble understanding how their friends -who are decent and moral people in every other sense of the word - can continue to subjugate other human beings based on the color of their skin. There is turmoil and pressure on the friendship from inside of the family as well as outside of the family. One thing that is a trademark of Jakes' novels is an embittered enemy holding a grudge and wanting to exact revenge throughout the story. Elkanah Bent is that character this time around, though Ashton and Virgilia do provide additional strain as a power-hungry southern belle and outspoken abolitionist respectively. The families are great friends, spending summers together as well as entering into business together. Billy and Orry's cousin Charles also attend West Point together. A romance blossoms between the two families, but can love really conquer all as the country is being torn apart? This novel uses history to tell the story, but it also really shows how the tension was building in this country as the inevitable war approached. It's easy to take a clinical look at the causes of the Civil War, but this helps us to have a real understanding of what was going on, as well as being entertaining and a great story. We know what the ending will be, yet I found myself hooked on every single page of the 803 page paperback novel.
Do you know what it is?
This is what begins the Harry Turtledove novel How Few Remain. Special Order 191 was Confederate General Lee's details of where every Confederate Army division was supposed to go and what they were supposed to do. In the real world, this order was lost by a Confederate courier and made its way into Union General McClellan's hands.
Now suppose that didn't happen...
Without going into the details of how the Confederacy won the Civil War, Turtledove sets this piece twenty years later as bitterness has now set in between the Confederates and the USA. A second engagement takes place and features familiar faces in different roles: Theodore Roosevelt brings together a renegade regiment out in Montana, Samuel Clemens is a newspaperman in San Francisco, General Custer is attempting to quell a Mormon uprising in Utah, Abraham Lincoln is about to break from the Republican Party to join the Socialist Party, and Frederick Douglass is a reporter writing from the battlefront.
What instigates the confrontation is the Confederacy purchasing two territories from Mexico which enables them to stretch from sea-to-sea. General Jeb Stuart is working with the Apache Indians (including Geronimo) in an attempt to keep Union soldiers out of the newly-acquired territories. France and Great Britain have sided with the Confederacy while Germany is attempting to remain a neutral observer.
This is essentially the first novel in his The Great War series in that it sets up what will happen in the next four novels about World War I. Alliances have been formed, continents divided, people coming into power at times different from what has actually happened in history.
This genre is known as Alternate History and makes for a fascinating read. Turtledove is thorough in his research and characterizations which makes the story so believable. The only problem is that so much detail and history can sometimes drag the plot along. Another thing I disliked was that he focused on people in history we already knew, rather than bringing in his own characters.
Note: This is not a sequel to Guns of the South which I previously reviewed. Though the premise is the same - the south winning the Civil War - in this novel their only help comes from the countries of France and Great Britain.
What if is a question that we ask at various turns in our lives, and why not history. What if all the votes... nah :-)
Harry Turtledove is probably the best writer of alternate history that I've ever come across. Guns of the South is the first book Turtledove wrote using the premise of the Confederacy winning the Civil War.
For the feat to be accomplished, he adds a bit of science fiction in the form of time travel when a group of white supremacists in the early 21st century South Africa get their hands on a time machine. They travel back and equip the army of the Confederacy with AK-47 rifles.
Events do not turn out quite the way the white supremacists planned, however, and by the end of the book it becomes clear that their original purpose will not be accomplished. They have, instead, unleashed upon the world a continent divided and bitter.
Turtledove uses actual historical figures such as Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln and Nathaniel Bedford Forrest to tell the story. What surprised me most was when I read the afterword and discovered that the characters I had thought he invented for the sake of the story were actual people, he just wrote a story about them. Mollie Bean is actually a woman who fought for the Confederacy, though her path takes a different turn than it did in reality.
Unlike other Turtledove novels in the alternate-history genre, he doesn't seem to jump all over the place with this one. The story is fairly contiguous and easy to follow.
The characters are well-written and we grow to care about them, moreso I felt than some of the other books. It was interesting to think about Robert E. Lee having to make the tough - possibly even life-threatening - choices when dealing with the white supremists.
From the extensive operation, care and maintenance of the AK-47's to the divided continent's political climate, Turtledove writes a detailed and compelling story. He has done some very thorough research. This allows him to portray the more well-known historical characters such as Robert E. Lee and Nathanial Bedford Forrest (who is in our history credited with starting the KKK) in a way that seems to be more realistic rather than becoming one-dimensional.
Though not a part of his Great War series, it seems as if the premise he sets forth here is the jumping off point for those novels, he just dropped the time-travel aspect of it.
Alternate history is one of my favorite genres. If you like this type of genre, it's a masterpiece. And if you've never read any alternate history before, this book is the place to start.
