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Like father, like son: Jeff Shaara completes Civil War trilogyWeb posted on: Tuesday, July 14, 1998 4:47:21 PM EDT (CNN) -- Jeff Shaara once made a living as a dealer of rare coins. It was his father, Michael Shaara, who was the writer, penning the Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War epic, "The Killer Angels", which became the basis for the film "Gettysburg". But when Michael Shaara died, Jeff did something practically unheard of in literary circles. He wrote "Gods and Generals", a best-selling prequel to his father's work. And now the son has gone one better with the best-selling "The Last Full Measure", which tells the story of the final two years of the Civil War. Jeff Shaara spoke about the book with Miles O'Brien on CNN's Sunday Morning. MILES O'BRIEN: I imagine when you got the idea that you wanted to pick up where your father left off that you entered into it with some trepidation. JEFF SHAARA: Well, the idea came from film director Ron Maxwell, the man who directed the Turner film "Gettysburg". And he said to me, "Wouldn't it be wonderful to continue your father's story in both directions?" I had never written anything before and I went into this actually with low expectations. There was no real stress because I thought: "Well, I'll try this. I'd like to continue my father's work." I really had no idea it would even be published. The fact that it's been received the way it has, has been amazing. O'BRIEN: When you got into it, did you realize you had found a talent which had been previously untapped? SHAARA: That took awhile. After "Gods and Generals" came out and I was touring the country, people kept referring to me as an author, and that's a description that -- I would hear that and I would think of my father. My father's the author, I just wrote this book and it took a while to really accept the fact that maybe this is something I should be doing. The publisher kept telling me, "You're a writer now. And you probably will be doing this the rest of your life." O'BRIEN: Still, it seems like it would be an awfully risky move. SHAARA: Well, I don't know about the risks. As I say, there were low expectations. Clearly had the publisher said -- and this is really what I expected -- "Nice try, come back when you learn how to write." O'BRIEN: Go back to your coins ... SHAARA: Exactly. I never dreamed I'd be sitting here right now talking to you in this kind of a situation. O'BRIEN: Help those of us in the audience who are unfamiliar with the story. Give us a basic synopsis of this latest version of the trilogy. SHAARA: My father's book covers just the four days around the battle of Gettysburg, and as we said, that is the basis for the film "Gettysburg". "Gods and Generals" begins before the war, and ends exactly where the "Killer Angels" begins. "The Last Full Measure" is after "The Killer Angels", and moves through the end of the war, through Appomattox. The most important point I can emphasize: This is not a history book. I mean, this is not what you read in high school. This is the story as told through the thoughts, through the minds of the characters themselves; and these are real people. In "The Last Full Measure" it's Robert E. Lee, Ulysses Grant, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Three principal characters of the war, real historical figures. O'BRIEN: Having said all of that, how scrupulous were you in researching your history to make sure that this was relatively accurate, given the fact that it is fiction, too? SHAARA: What makes it fiction by definition is that I'm putting dialogue and thoughts into these characters. I was painstaking in the historical accuracy. If I start playing around with history, you know, putting characters where they were not just to make my story telling convenient, the book deserves to lose credibility. I was very, very careful about getting first of all the facts right. Secondly, the voices of the characters have to ring true. If I start putting words in the mouth of Robert E. Lee that ... don't ring true to me, there's no reason why they should ring true to you. So it was very important to get to know the characters on as deeply a personal level as I could, and that's where the research was. O'BRIEN: Was there enough of a body of work out there for you to get that feel so you could write dialogue and feel that it was at least reflected their personalities? SHAARA: Well, I hope the books speaks for themselves. ... There is a huge body now of research material that, even in my father's day, was very difficult for him to find. Now, because of the audience, on the strength of Ken Burns' PBS series of the strength of the film "Gettysburg", there is now a huge body of this material. Now, it's all being reprinted and so there is -- things for example, like Lee's letters. Books by Joshua Chamberlain. Ulysses Grant's memoirs. His wife's memoirs. The accounts of the staff officers who were there. These works are now readily available and that was a huge advantage for me. O'BRIEN: How do you explain the continued interest -- popular interest in the Civil War? SHAARA: Well, I think you said the word. That's a word that make some historians cringe -- that what I'm doing, what my father did, was popularize history. I don't think that's a bad thing ... if you can bring these characters alive, if you put faces on the names. I can't tell you how many people have come up to me in places like Gettysburg and said, "I hated history in high school. I never wanted to read another history book when I left school. I read the 'Killer Angels', or 'Gods and Generals', and now 'The Last Full Measure', and I'm into it because these are interesting characters." These are people just like us, this is not ancient history. The Civil War is not that far removed from who we are. And, in fact, it's also, I think, a question of heroes. I mean, we miss heroes today. We're very cynical about that and I think when we realize that people like Ulysses Grant are not these one dimensional characters we learned in high school, but they're fascinating three-dimensional characters. I think that's the draw. O'BRIEN: Briefly, Jeff, what's next for you. SHAARA: I'm working now on the Mexican War. Going back with many of the same characters, who were all on the same side in 1847. All wearing blue uniforms and fighting under a marvelous character, Winfield Scott, a man whose story I'm really looking forward to tell. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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