The author who made historical fiction fun
John Jakes 1932–2023
John Jakes brought American history to life. Writing more than 80 books, including Westerns, fantasies, and mysteries, Jakes won mass acclaim for his multipart works of historical fiction. His historical novels, rich with carefully researched period details, turned events involving real-life figures such as Ben Franklin into page-turners full of adulterous affairs, revenge scenarios, secret documents, and bitter rivalries. The formula was a hit with readers. All eight of his books in The Kent Family Chronicles, which tracked seven generations of a fictional family from the American Revolution onward, were best-sellers in the
1970s, while the Civil War trilogy that followed, North and South, was just as popular. Jakes won less favor with critics, who found his prose rather workmanlike. But he made no apologies, saying his goal was to educate and entertain. “Sue me for not being Flaubert,” he said.
Growing up in Chicago, where his mother was a teacher and his father a delivery executive, Jakes was “a voracious reader of pulp magazines and science fiction,” said The Washington Post. He was just a sophomore at DePauw University when he sold his first story, a sci-fi tale of a man “pursued by a diabolical electric toaster.” After getting a master’s degree in literature, he spent 17 years as an ad copywriter, writing short stories at night with some success. In 1971 he quit his day job to write fulltime. Just when he began to doubt that his writing could support his family came his “breakthrough,” said Deadline. A publisher was looking for someone to write a series “to commemorate the bicentennial” of the United States, coming up in 1976, and Jakes signed on.
The Kent Chronicles were “unabashed massmarket fiction,” said The New York Times, but amid all the hoopla surrounding the bicentennial, they “touched a national nerve.” Soon Jakes was commanding eight-figure advances while “churning out as many as 5,000 words a day.” TV adaptations of his work proved hugely popular in the 1980s; the North and South trilogy alone yielded three ABC miniseries. Jakes said he felt a sense of responsibility knowing that he was a primary source of education for readers who wouldn’t browse the history aisle. “Maybe they’ll never read a Barbara Tuchman book,” he said, “but down at the Kmart they’ll pick up one of mine.”