Review: North and South

The questions from readers usually begin with why. Why so many characters in your books? Why so many points of view? Why so many settings and story lines? Why are you making my head spin?

The answer, of course, is John Jakes. From the moment I read his Kent Family Chronicles in high school, I've leaned toward family sagas with multiple themes and perspectives. I've favored the big picture over the small -- as a reader, a television viewer, and now as an author.

For that reason, I have read most of Jakes' books and viewed the television adaptations, including North and South, which I revisited on Hoopla this month. I found the series, the first of three, as thrilling, entertaining, and yes, sappy as when it came out in 1985.

North and South, you may recall, is not just America's story before, during, and after the Civil War. It is history as soap opera, with characters as good and evil as the characters in Dallas and Dynasty.

What I like, though, is the way the story moves from place to place and person to person. Jakes keeps the reader (and the viewer) engaged by shifting the focus early and often. He keeps the Hazards and the Mains, the families in the series, front and center. He stirs things up.

The adaptation stirs things even more with an all-star cast. If you've ever wanted to see Patrick Swayze, Kirstie Alley, David Carradine, Elizabeth Taylor, Wayne Newton, Johnny Cash, Linda Evans, Lloyd Bridges, Olivia de Havilland, and Billy Dee Williams in the same series, this is the show for you. Two dozen A-list actors appear on screen.

I plan to resume my journey down Miniseries Lane this week and then continue my own series in progress. The first draft of Sea Spray, the third book in the Time Box saga, is eighty-percent complete.

As with most of my other works, it will feature multiple settings and points of view. Enough, I dare say, to make John Jakes smile.