America250: The Epic American Historical Fiction Series

 

    Throughout American history, some authors have attempted to capture and to fictionalize huge chunks of time, relating the adventures of recurring characters or even documenting generations of families to tell their stories, and, in the process, the American story.  Here are some of the best known series.  Maybe you've read some or maybe you weren't aware that some of the books were part of a series, but maybe you will find something to pique  your interest.  

    Let's start with the classics.

The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of five novels (The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie) by James Fenimore Cooper, set in the eighteenth-century era of development in the primarily former Iroquois areas in central New York. Each novel features Natty Bumpo, a frontiersman known to European-American settlers as "Leatherstocking", "The Pathfinder", and "the trapper". Native Americans call him "Deerslayer", "La Longue Carabine" ("Long Rifle" in French),  and "Hawkeye."  The story dates are derived from dates given in the tales and span the period roughly of 1740–1806. They do not necessarily correspond with the actual dates of the historical events described in the series, which are discrepancies Cooper likely introduced for the sake of convenience. (Wikipedia)  They were published between 1823 and 1841, and they became very popular not only in America, but also in Europe.  Cooper, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne are considered to be among the first American novelists to become popular outside of the United States, contributing to the rise of a unique American cultural identity.  

From 1932 to 1943, Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane published a series of autobiographical children's novels collectively called the Little House on the Prairie  books, and they have been a staple in children's literature ever since.  They've also been made into a very popular television series in the 1980s, with a new adaptation just dropping this summer.   The stories are based on Wilder's childhood and adulthood in the American Midwest (Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Missouri) between 1872 and 1894.  I must admit that I've never read any of the books.

Are The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer contenders for the title of of "THE Great American Novel"? Definitely.  Few novels have been adapted as often or have inspired as much creativity as these in American culture.  Probably the most interesting adaptation/inspiration so far is James, which is an extremely inventive retelling of the famous stories through the eyes of their runaway slave companion, Jim.

The Kent Family Chronicles refers to a set of 8 novels by John Jakes, written especially to mark the bicentennial in 1976.  They were published between 1974 and 1979, and they were adapted into three star-studded television miniseries that aired in 1978 and 1979.  As the name suggests, the books tell the story of the Kent family from just before the start of the American Revolution to 1890 as they experience the major events of the period and encounter various historical figures.  I think I may have read one of two of them, but I'm not sure.

If you're looking for military history series, I'm sure you are familiar with Michael Shaara and his son Jeff Shaara,  Their series about the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Civil War in the West, and World War II are iconic.  I've never been a big fan of miliary history, so I've only ever read The Killer Angels.  

Now, these are books that I've read.  James Michener, 1907 -1997, published more than forty books in his lifetime.  Many of the novels were multigenerational stories unfolding over centuries in a specific geographical location, full of historical and geographical details.  While they're not related to each other, they reflect the same themes:  intertwined relationship between geography and human destiny, the persistence of the past into the present, the survival of diverse cultures, and the profound ways lands are shaped and defined by their inhabitants over centuries.  Centennial, based in the high plains of eastern Colorado, is definitely my favorite book and my favorite Michener television miniseries, of which there were several.  (The 1970s and 1980s were the age of huge television miniseries, multi-part, big budget productions shown over a couple of weeks that were major events for the tv networks.)

If you follow any book influencers on social media, you are well aware that the whole world discovered Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove at precisely the same time a few months ago, and they wouldn't shut up about it.  (From Lonesome Dove, they all moved on to Stoner for a moment, and now it seems that East of Eden is the greatest novel ever written.) Always ahead of the curve, I, of course, discovered it decades ago.  It was another great miniseries - decades ago, and it introduced me to McMurtry.  I read all of the sequels and other works.  However, somehow I missed his Berrybinder Narratives, starting with Sin Killer, and I will begin correcting that soon. 

The West has always been fertile ground for historians, novelists, and filmmakers, and there are some other excellent book series.  Jim Fergus wrote a trilogy beginning with One Thousand White Women, based on an interesting premise.  In Fergus' story, it's 1875, and the Cheyenne have decided that assimilation is their best chance for cultural survival, and they enter into an agreement with President Grant to speed assimilation by encouraging white and black women to volunteer to marry into the Cheyenne tribe.  The women are recruited from prisons, asylums, and other restrictive situations, and they begin new lives and adventures as Cheyenne brides.

The late 1960s and early 1970s brought a major shift in how the American West was depicted in popular culture and among historians.  Realism replaced the romanticism that had been the norm when depicting the West.  Native American voices and perspectives were introduced, and a more accurate picture of the West developed, peeling back glossy, whitewashed layers of history to reveal the warts and other ugliness. An effort was made to  tell Native American history, just as there were movements to promote black history, Asian-American history, and Hispanic history.  Authors often used satire and parody as well.  A perfect example is the set of two books written by Thomas Berger:  Little Big Man and The Return of Little Big Man. Little Big Man  ranks as one of my favorite novels and the 1970 film adaptation starring Dustin Hoffman is one of my favorite films.  I also enjoyed The Return.  

Moving into the 20th century with two recommendations:

Tony Hillerman created a series of crime mysteries set on the Navajo reservation, featuring Navajo Tribal Police detectives Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito.  The novels are routinely praised as both good, solid mysteries and accurate depictions of Navajo culture.  Since Hillerman's death, his daughter Anne has continued writing novels in the series.

Author Tommy Orange has garnered lots of praise and attention in the past couple of years for his novels which portray Native American life in the 21st century as it has been shaped by the past.  I loved both his first novel There, There and its sequel Wandering Stars, and I highly recommend both to fiction readers in general.  

Speaking of miniseries, the grandaddy of ALL tv miniseries was of course Alex Haley's Roots.  The book was a huge bestseller, and it seemed as if every single television set in the country was tuned in to the tv event.  People were discussing history - and being confronted with history - like they hadn't before, and genealogy became a thing.  Shortly after Haley's death, a sequel, Queen, was published (and made into a miniseries).

Two of my favorite writers of historical fiction have contributed great historical fiction series which cover the 20th century:  Ken Follett and Herman Wouk.  Both use fictional characters interacting with nonfictional historical figures and historical events.  Follet's Century Trilogy is totally epic, spanning nearly the entire century, from pre- World War One through Obama's election.  Herman Wouk's Henry Family series consists of two books published in the 1970s:  Winds of War and War and Remembrance.  They depict World War II through the lives of the extended Henry family and their acquaintances, also interacting with real historical figures.  I discovered the books and their excellent tv miniseries  while I was in high school and absolutely loved them.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store and Deacon King Kong by James McBride technically don't comprise a series, but they feel like they are in the same world, and I think you should read both.  They are the stories of neighborhoods full of interesting characters and long hidden mysteries to be unraveled.

If you like things gritty, dark, grimy, and dirty, James Ellroy is your man.  His novels almost make you feel the need to shower after reading, but they are so good.  The L.A. Quartet is a series of four books focused on the dark and seedy side of Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s.  Underworld U.S.A. is a trilogy set from the 1950s into the 1970s detaining the complicated network of activities involving organized crime, radical political factions, and federal intelligence organizations.  If you like crime noir, go at once and seek out James Ellroy books if you are not familiar already.

Finally, another author and series that I first encountered in high school.  (My classmates and I had no idea at the time, but we were absolutely incredibly and uniquely fortunate in our small south Georgia high school because we had the best high school English teachers, and they regularly introduced us to authors, works, and ideas that I feel few others, then and now, were exposed to.)  John Updike's Rabbit  series captures the zeitgeist of the 1960s and 1970s, especially in urban America - the world of the tv show "Mad Men." Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom was a star high school athlete whose life loses its luster as he becomes mired in the adult world of work and marriage drudgery.  (Later generations read Harry Potter; I was reading Rabbit.  What does that say?)  The series takes the reader through Rabbit's life.  

BONUS:  Let's say that you like historical fiction and that you like mysteries.  Here are two fun series for you.  

First, Jonathan Putnam has published four novels starring Abraham Lincoln and his real-life best friend Joshua Speed, inspired by Lincoln's early days as a lawyer in and around Springfield, Illinois.  In fact, Lincoln really was involved in a true crime story involving three brothers falsely accused of murdering Archibald Fisher.  After winning acquittal for the brothers by proving Fisher was never murdered, he wrote up the case for publication in a popular true crime journal published at the time.

More recently, I've enjoyed Paul Levine's Charlie Chaplin-Albert Einstein buddy series, set in the tumultuous years just prior to Pearl Harbor, when America was full of Axis spies and saboteurs and home-grown fascist and racist groups like the German-American Bund, the Silver Shirts, and the KKK.  The pair really were best friends, and the novels are a lot of fun, action-filled, and packed with cameos by real historical figures.