You may best remember North and South as a television miniseries in the early 1980s starring Patrick Swazye and his mullet. I'm not sure mullets were prevalent in civil war era America but they sure were prevalent on The Swazye in the '80s. God rest his soul. I can remember my mom reading all three books in the trilogy and I remember our family watching the miniseries. It was quite the television event at the time. Being 10 at the time of the miniseries airing, I naturally don't remember much of it so when I came across it awhile ago in my mom's book collection, I asked to borrow it.
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| Ye Olde Mullet |
North and South chronicles the lives of two families - the Mains (Hey, that's my family's surname! Cool! Now I'm even more interested!) of South Carolina and the Hazards of Pennsylvania. The Mains run a successful rice plantation and - you guessed it - own many slaves. The Hazards own a large ironworks factory and don't own slaves. Orry Main and George Hazard meet at West Point and despite their cultural differences, become fast friends. They later fight in the Mexican/American war together where Orry loses an arm in battle and George saves his life.
After the war, Orry returns to South Carolina to run the family's cotton plantation and wallow in misery due to his lack of a left arm and the fact that the woman he loves has married a local a-hole. George returns to Pennsylvania to run the ironworks, raise a family and presumably smoke cigars. Seriously! He is always smoking a cigar in the book. Jakes features George's cigar smoking so prevalently that I can only assume he's setting the character up to die of lung cancer in one of the following books. Don't tell me if he does. I want to be surprised.
Tensions rise between the northern Americans and southern Americans as the slavery issue heats up and the country draws closer and closer to civil war. Through it all, Orry and George are determined to keep theirs and their families friendships intact.
Jakes did his research for North and South. I learned a lot about the lead up, characters involved and the circumstances surrounding the civil war. Jakes even inserts some key real-life characters into the story to interact with the fictional characters including Robert E. Lee and President Lincoln himself. However, some of the history seems forced or awkward. Characters will spontaneously begin debating issues unrelated to what was currently happening in the book or random characters will appear out of nowhere to provide exposition. And Jakes also conveniently positions his characters so they can basically Forrest Gump their way through the civil war. Oh look, two of the characters are conveniently at West Point when Robert E. Lee was the head master. Oh look, one of the characters is conveniently stationed at Fort Sumter when it is fired upon. Oh look, two of the characters happen to be on a train that is detained during John Brown's raid in Harper's Ferry, Virginia. It all just felt contrived.
That being said, this is basically a 735 page Harlequin romance with some history thrown in. There is a LOT of bodice ripping and passionate embracing going down. And the dialogue is equally cheesy. I really just got the feeling that Jakes isn't that good of a writer. Yes, he was able to create an elaborate world with many, many characters rooted in historical events. He just didn't do it skillfully. Margaret Mitchell did it a helluva lot better.
And my biggest problem with the book (which might be a little spoilery): 735 pages; one huge, lengthy book and the war hasn't even started yet! Come on! Yes, I get it. There was a lot of lead up to the war. We didn't just go to war overnight. But let's get to the point already. Which means, I guess I have to read the second in the trilogy, Love and War, which by the name alone almost guarantees more bodice ripping.
I'm giving North and South two and a half bows.
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