Family Stories

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  I remember Suzanne Sugarbaker on “Designing Women” saying something like “I don’t see why we have to study history.  If history repeats itself, why should we pay attention the first time?” It’s true that many of us don’t care to read about history. Maybe it’s a holdover from school when we had to memorize all those dates. Or maybe it’s because a lot of historical writings are just too dry and boring. We need something to hang it on; we need to feel a personal connection. So hooray! There’s historical fiction, a way to immerse ourselves in the past through the eyes of those who lived it. If you’re a “Downton Abbey” fan you know how mesmerizing the past can be, how it can draw us in.

  There are so many great books in this category it’s impossible to mention even a fraction of them. Most readers of the genre first think about the classic authors like Dickens and Steinbeck, or they remember certain titles like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” These stories hold up over time, and are extremely entertaining when you’re not worried about what’s going to be on the test! But today I want to narrow down the historical fiction category to just family sagas, or as they’re sometimes called, multi-generational stories, and to mention a few authors you may want to try.

  If you’re a fan of the BBC “Poldark” series, you should definitely check out the books by Winston Graham. There are 12 titles in all, covering Cornwall, England from 1783 to 1820. There’s romance, politics, rivalries, and treachery galore. It begins as protagonist Ross Poldark returns from fighting in the American Revolutionary War to find his former fiancee has decided to marry his cousin instead. Further, his family home is in ruins and the family’s livelihood, a copper mine, is now closed. Poldark’s struggles to rebuild his life and fortunes are played out across the larger canvas of England’s shaky social history during this period. His children’s adventures are taken up in later books. It’s all one big, tempestuous soap opera. I can speak from my library experience in saying that both men and women love this series.

  Right now I’m in the middle of the six-part Clifton Chronicles by Jeffrey Archer. The series follows hero Harry Clifton and others of his generation as they try to make their way through the period before, during, and after WWII. Archer reminds me very much of Charles Dickens, especially Dickens’ coming of age stories like “David Copperfield.” Harry’s life is full of twists and surprises. Also like Dickens, whose stories started out as serialized installments, Archer loves to use cliff-hangers to snare the reader into the next chapter or the next book. Don’t expect anything highbrow, just good old-fashioned story-telling.  

  We get to know three generations in one book by Min Jin Lee. “Pachinko” takes place in Korea and Japan in the WWII era. Before reading this book I knew next to nothing about Japan’s occupation of Korea before the war, nor did I know about the second-class-citizen treatment of the Koreans by the Japanese after the war. One family’s struggles to survive and eventually even to flourish is mirrored in the game of pachinko (which seems to be a lot like pinball with very high stakes), with its ricochets and twists of fate. You’ll find yourself rooting for the heroine Sunja, her children and grandchildren. This is a lot of drama crammed into one volume.

  I’ve briefly mentioned Wilbur Smith and his Courtney family novels in an earlier column. There are 17 novels published between 1964 and 2018, covering multiple generations of Courtneys starting in the 1600’s and coming right up to the 1980’s. Don’t despair if this seems like too huge a commitment; there are logical stopping-places built in. The stories mostly concern themselves with the country of South Africa – so of course they cover diamond mining and the Boer War – but there are also elements of WWI and the Apartheid movement. It’s remarkable how much history Smith can slide into a narrative that is so action-packed.

  Name a literary award and it has probably been won by Ken Follett. Follett was mostly known for his stories of spies and international intrigue (“Eye of the Needle,” “The Key to Rebecca”) until he took a giant career turn with “Pillars of the Earth” in 1989. It actually started with his interest in medieval architecture, which led to researching the great cathedrals of the period, which led him to trying to fictionalize the building of one such cathedral. It’s hard to exaggerate the scope of this book and its two successors, “World Without End” and “Column of Fire.”  The series covers centuries and generations in the same way that the building of one of these structures required centuries and generations. Expect action, violence, romance, mystery, monks, soldiers, and beautiful ladies. Even after all three volumes you’ll wish there were more to the story.

  We’ve barely scratched the surface of the multi-generational novel. Watch this space for a later return to this subject. Happy reading!  

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About Kaye West

Kaye West recently retired from the Henry County Library System. She enjoys reading, taking daily walks, and spending time with friends. She lives in McDonough with her husband and spoiled-rotten cat.