The Furies (59 page)

Perhaps Jephtha would help when he came to the city. On Jephtha’s side too, the family had heirs, his sons. Whatever their position on the divisive issues tormenting the country, they were Kents. With the proceeds of the Ophir claim in Hopeful, and with the promising reports from the Sierras, they would be wealthy men—

If there were no war to destroy them, to destroy the nation—

On the debit side, she knew she had at times been ruthless in order to survive, ruthless in obtaining her ends. So ruthless, Louis had very nearly been sacrificed. Yet from her ruthlessness had come the restoration of the Kent fortune. Perhaps that entry had a place on both sides of the ledger.

And the company. The company belonged to its rightful owners again. Her hand moved over the blue-covered document, a kind of caress—

All at once she felt quite sleepy. The sunlight burned her eyes. Details of the room melted away in the glare—

The appearance of that intense light told her the end was very near. She was terrified of dying alone. Bart and Michael had gone downstairs for breakfast with Rose, who had sat with her through the night. She tried to grasp the bell pull—

She was too feeble to reach it.

Weary and frightened, she gave up trying to assess her own life. She remembered the Mandan legend of the vine; the great womanly hands left the vine alone, or tore it, denying paradise. The meaning of the legend brought a certain comfort. Only a Divine intelligence could fully and accurately judge a human life, and find it worthy or wanting—

She’d taken lives. The man in Hopeful—and Hamilton Stovall—lingered most acutely in her mind. Those acts would weigh heavily in the judgment, she knew.

But the judgment itself was beyond her.

I am a Kent.

I did what I had to.

Let the verdict come down.

An almost childlike expression of pleasure came onto her face. Settling her head more comfortably on the pillow, she turned toward the intense light. She’d quite forgotten the light shone through a window in a specific house in a specific city in America—

Or did it?

She felt her strength waning. She was suddenly ashamed of her own fear.

Guilty she might be. But what human being was not? There were things in her past she needn’t be ashamed of, things to be proud of; she wouldn’t surrender so meekly to a condemning judgment—

That’s not what grandfather would have done.

Slowly, her eyes closed.

It was puzzling. The light remained.

Growing steadily brighter—

Suddenly, clear and sharp, she saw the vine to paradise.

She spit on her hands and began to climb.

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.