Chesapeake by James Michener

I can't remember the last time it took me an entire month to get through a single book. Possibly Tom Jones. Anyways, Chesapeake is the history of the Chesapeake Bay area from the 1500s to the 1970s. Needless to say, this is an incredibly long time span, and it accounts for the extreme length of the novel. Beginning with Native Americans and progressing to the first settlers, Michener's plot focuses mainly on three men and their descendants, though he intermitttently narrates the stories of others whose lives are intertwined with the primary characters, even digressing to follow a family of geese during their migration.

The characters are surprisingly varied, considering the sheer number of them. Michener's foremost virtue may be his ability to achieve myriad perspectives and personalities in an agreeable facsimile of real life, all the while weaving his narratives into a cohesive whole. Social issues, from racial equality to religious freedom to the environment, are explored through the actions and experiences of the citizens. Michener often champions his cause by way of the Quakers, for whom he seemed to have a profound respect. The carrying of the plot through the lineage of families provokes reflection on the nature of legacies, the pervasiveness of the "sins of the fathers," and the brevity and insignificance of the individual in light of history.

When one 20th century descendant of a founding Chesapeake family said to another, "I do a little genealogy" and mentioned she'd found that their families had been connected in the past, and I had just read some nine hundred pages describing the illustrious intrigues of their forebears that these modern-day people would never know about, I stopped. I myself, by virtue of being alive, am descended from just as many people whose stories I will never hear. I don't even know the respective occupations of all my grandparents. Forget the intimate details of their lives, or anyone preceding them. What a wealth of knowledge I will never be privy to.

Chesapeake was ultimately about the land. Though its inhabitants are central to the story, each character is brought on the stage only briefly, as if the person himself were not as important as the part he played in forming the society of the Chesapeake Bay area.