Charleston by John Jakes

 

Charleston by John Jakes

 

John Jakes is well respected for his books and especially for his wonderful talent for telling a good story.  You may remember his famous trilogy, The North and The South, which is not only a terrific book, but was made into an outstanding TV series.

 

His writing style is so very personal, peering into the lives of friends and families, with twists and turns that draw you into the chasms of history and make you love some family members and despise others.  Charleston is such a book.  Plots and schemes abound, touching on the good and bad nature of man.  Can’t have a good book without villains, but also with good people who do bad things, and others doing good things that lead to the dark edges of both good and evil.

 

I get to Charleston fairly often, and walk the streets hearing names and seeing places that give me pause, as if I should know more, just can only peck at pieces of incomplete knowledge.  You can’t really know a city until the names of streets and areas mean something to you, otherwise you’re just another blank-brained tourist, snapping photos, going to a restaurant someone told you about, passing building and homes that look old.

 

I was on a tour, years ago, and not in Charleston, when the tour guide pointed out the window of the bus and called out, “Out the left side, you’ll see an old church. You might want to take a picture.”  Oh, goody.

 

Did you know the first shots of the Civil War were fired at the Federal fort, Fort Sumter, that still sits in Charleston Harbor?  You do?  Good for you. Maybe you even visited the fort. Even better. (Several places claim to be from where the first shots were fired and who fired them.)

 

But, John Jakes’ book dives much deeper, beginning with the colonial days and the birth of the United States and how Charleston was captured and Red Coats roamed the streets and made the laws and how Charleston had both rebels and British loyalist citizens.  How was the city run under British occupation?

 

And moving along by the decades, what about slavery?  Were there many slave holders and what kind of compromises keep the states together before leading to secession?  Historical figures play a prominent role, but so do the fictional families that walked separate side of those same sidewalks you’re walking now, looking for some iced tea and shrimp and grits.

 

Many things are touched on that lead us right into today’s headlines.  Charleston has had many rough times and been occupied by very unfriendly forces, yet the country and the city and the state and the people somehow survived.

 

Charleston is one of our nation’s oldest cities and one of the most fascinating.  How it all worked out through times of glory and strife, or if it did, and how it did, is intertwined with fiction and history, by the heroic scope of John Jakes’ novel, Charleston.  A bit over five hundred pages, I was glued to every page, happy and angry and hopeful.  Took me only four days to finish this fabulous tale of a wonderful city.  And, by the way, I’m not the world’s fastest reader!

Why read Killing Lincoln, by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard?  We already know the story, right?   No, we don’t.    Mostly what we know came from a short paragraph in a middle school history book that summed up the entire American Civil War in one page.  We memorized enough clichés to answer three multiple questions on the test, and moved on to the next chapter.

If you want to know American history, you’ve got to dig deeper.  Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard have done that for you. And, my prejudice is that every American should be able to recount America’s major events, with depth and understanding.

Killing Lincoln is history, couched in a thriller that brings the story to life.  The characters involved in this drama were flesh and blood, with families, fears, hopes, dreams, and often dreadful shortcomings.

This is not the history you remember, but a well-told tale that has the pages flapping and new questions running as fast as deer through a dark forest.

Picture the bloodiest war in American history coming to an end on Virginia’s bloody battlefields.  Lee’s army is finally defeated, the south subjugated, the slaves freed. 

Yet, Lincoln still cannot rest.  There’s a nation to rebuild.  His cold-blooded murder by a southern sympathizer will lead the United States in a different direction than the one Mr. Lincoln imaged.  The starting point will be marked in blood in Ford’s Theater, within walking distance of the White House. What followed left a deeper wound that even impacts today’s America.

What was America like on the day of the fatal shot?  Lincoln’s America is one you and I would not recognize.  The District of Columbia is a sprawl of dirt streets, galloping horses, and saloons on every corner.  Want to talk to President Lincoln?  Stroll into the White House and wait your turn, or spend the night in a hallway and catch him in the morning.  If you want to hear him speak, just gather with the multitudes on the White House lawn.  Get as close as the crowds will allow.  Security?  Well, sure, but let’s not let it interfere with strolling to the closest bar and tipping a cool one.

The war is over.  Why not celebrate with a little gunfire and a lot of whiskey.  And what about John Wilkes Booth?  What was he like and how did he think he could possibly get away with killing a victorious President?  What did he hope to accomplish?

Just in case you have strong Liberal leanings, and flinch at the mention of Bill O’Reilly’s name, have no fear.  Killing Lincoln, written in the style of a novelist telling a story, is straight with the facts, including an array of colorful asides that bring the characters to you in brilliant, living color.

This is no ideologue’s slanted, slash and burn, feeble attempt at a rewrite.  It’s a dynamic retelling of events leading to the first American President being assassinated, couched in his life and times, and adorned with the hopes and dreams that all ended with the crack of a pistol shot.

Part thriller and all history, just pour yourself a glass of your favorite, pick up Killing Lincoln, and you’ll be drawn into an America you never knew, and an event that changed the shape of America forever.