The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles
Page 48
Now, with the winter rain ticking the glass of the dining room windows and the candles burning down in their graceful chimneys, Donald refilled his glass and regarded the portrait with a sardonic smile.
In the hours before Angus Fletcher had closed his eyes for the last time, he had rambled a good deal to his older son who sat by the bedside. Angus confessed his joy in Judson having partially redeemed himself by the way he died. But Angus again stated that he thanked the God he would soon confront that Judson had fathered no children. In spite of his manner of dying, Angus said with regret, Judson had been driven by the devil. Pride and grief wove together in that, Angus’ final verdict on his second son.
It was a blessing that Angus Fletcher wasn’t alive today, Donald thought, to have seen what he had seen at McLean’s.
He understood at last Peggy McLean’s long absence in New England before Judson’s departure to the west She had been bearing the child.
When had it been conceived? So far as he knew, Judson had visited Peggy only that one time after Seth’s burial. Perhaps there had been additional meetings of which Donald was unaware.
Obviously others in the neighborhood would now suspect an illegitimate birth as one possible reason for Peggy’s mysterious behavior. Donald thought that only the most perspicacious would identify the father, however.
He understood Peggy’s apprehension during the afternoon visit, too. He was thankful he had done nothing to show he recognized the little girl’s resemblance to his younger brother.
But there could be no mistake. Elizabeth had Judson Fletcher’s bright hair and Judson Fletcher’s bright eyes, and she bore a certain facial resemblance to Judson as well.
She had also inherited Judson’s violent tendencies, it seemed.
And that fellow Kent was taking the child into his household! Donald wished him the strength and luck to survive the ordeal.
God, it was funny how the world revolved.
A collection of contentious, stubborn-minded colonials of all degrees of literacy, wealth and dedication had somehow defeated the military might of the globe’s greatest empire. In the process, a new country had come into being.
And Judson, who had squandered most of his life in uncontrollable excesses, had redeemed himself in his father’s eyes by dying a hero of sorts—
And leaving no heirs.
And now an angel-faced little harridan was carrying the Fletcher blood straight to the table of a Boston family. Thank heaven I won’t be around in fifty years to see what havoc that’s wrought!
Laughing aloud, Donald poured more wine while the rain beat harder on the house and the Fletcher eyes glared from the wall in the guttering candlelight.
Afterword
AUTHORS SOMETIMES THINK (misguidedly) that once The End is written, all the important work has been done.
The truth, of course, is far different. The publication process is never completed—a real link is never created—until a book reaches the hands of a reader.
And a great many people collectively perform the indispensible job of seeing any new book out into the world where that happens. But those same people are usually overlooked in the author’s haste to thank everyone from his postman to his dog.
So recognition and appreciation are due to the ladies and gentlemen of the Pyramid Publications sales and marketing staff—and also to Mr. Sy Brownstein and all his associates at International Circulation Distributors—for their dedicated and enthusiastic effort on behalf of this series, and this writer.
JOHN JAKES
A Biography of John Jakes
John Jakes is a bestselling author of historical fiction, science fiction, children’s books, and nonfiction. He is best known for his highly acclaimed eight-volume Kent Family Chronicles series, an American family saga that reaches from the Revolutionary War to 1890, and the North and South Trilogy, which follows two families from different regions during the American Civil War. His commitment to historical accuracy and evocative storytelling earned him the title “godfather of historical novelists” from the Los Angeles Times and led to his streak of sixteen consecutive New York Times bestsellers.
Born in Chicago in 1932, Jakes originally studied to be an actor, but he turned to writing professionally after selling his first short story for twenty-five dollars during his freshman year at Northwestern University. That check, Jakes later said, “changed the whole direction of my life.” He enrolled in DePauw University’s creative writing program shortly thereafter and graduated in 1953. The following year, he received his master’s degree in American literature from Ohio State University.
While at DePauw, Jakes met Rachel Ann Payne, whom he married in 1951. After finishing his studies, Jakes worked as a copywriter for a large pharmaceutical company before transitioning to advertising, writing copy for several large firms, including Madison Avenue’s Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. At night, he continued to write fiction, publishing two hundred short stories and numerous mystery, western, and science fiction books. He turned to historical fiction, long an interest of his, in 1973 when he started work on The Bastard, the first novel of the Kent Family Chronicles. Jakes’s masterful hand at historical fiction catapulted The Bastard (1974) onto the bestseller list—with each subsequent book in the series matching The Bastard’s commercial success. Upon publication of the next three books in the series—The Rebels (1975), The Seekers (1975), and The Furies (1976)—Jakes became the first-ever writer to have three books on the New York Times bestseller list in a single year. The series has maintained its popularity, and there are currently more than fifty-five million copies of the Kent Family Chronicles in print worldwide.
Jakes followed the success of his first series with the North and South Trilogy, set before, during, and after the Civil War. The first volume, North and South, was published in 1982 and reaffirmed Jakes’s standing as a “master of the ancient art of story telling” (The New York Times Book Review). Following the lead of North and South, the other two books in the series, Love and War (1984) and Heaven and Hell (1987), were chart-topping bestsellers. The trilogy was also made into an ABC miniseries—a total of thirty hours of programming—starring Patrick Swayze. Produced by David L. Wolper for Warner Brothers North and South remains one of the highest-rated miniseries in television history.
The first three Kent Family Chronicles were also made into a television miniseries, produced by Universal Studios and aired on the Operation Prime Time network. Andrew Stevens starred as the patriarch of the fictional family. In one scene, Jakes himself appears as a scheming attorney sent to an untimely end by villain George Hamilton.
In addition to historical fiction, Jakes penned many works of science fiction, including the Brak the Barbarian series, published between 1968 and 1980. Following his success with the Kent Family Chronicles and the North and South Trilogy, Jakes continued writing historical fiction with the stand-alone novel California Gold and the Crown Family Saga (Homeland and its sequel, American Dreams).
Jakes remains active in the theater as an actor, director, and playwright. His adaptation of A Christmas Carol is widely produced by university and regional theaters, including the prestigious Alabama Shakespeare Festival and theaters as far away as Christchurch, New Zealand. He holds five honorary doctorates, the most recent of which is from his alma mater Ohio State University. He has filmed and recorded public service announcements for the American Library Association and hasreceived many other awards, including a dual Celebrity and Citizen’s Award from the White House Conference on Libraries and Information and the Cooper Medal from the Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina. Jakes is a member of the Authors Guild, the Dramatists Guild, the PEN American Center, and Writers Guild of America East. He also serves on the board of the Authors Guild Foundation.
Jakes and his wife have four children and eleven grandchildren. After living for thirty-two years on a South Carolina barrier island, they now reside in Sarasota, Florida, where Jakes has resumed his volunteer work on behalf
of theaters and libraries while he continues writing.
Jakes in 1936, on his fourth birthday.
Jakes and his comedy partner, Ron Tomme (at right), won first prize for their comedy act on Rubin’s Stars of Tomorrow, a talent show aired on WGN-TV, in Chicago, 1949. Tomme went on to star as the leading man on the CBS soap opera Love of Life.
Jakes with his daughter, Andrea, in the mid-1950s, in front of his home on North Walnut Street, Waukegan, Illinois.
Jakes received his fourth honorary doctorate, this one from DePauw University, in 1985 in Greencastle, Indiana. Jakes and his wife are both DePauw graduates. At left is Dr. Richard Rosser, then-president of the university.
Jakes with his wife, Rachel, at a boat party for sixty friends to celebrate the couple’s fiftieth anniversary in 2001 at Calibogue Sound, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Jakes’s 2006 publicity photo for The Gods of Newport, taken on the Cliff Walk at Newport, Rhode Island.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1975 by John Jakes and Lyle Kenyon Engel
cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-4532-6319-8
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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