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!
