His attempts to serve are met with scorn and drastic measures, exemplifying that the divisions between the northern and southern states remain strong. Charles Main becomes the new main character from the South, who grapples with life as a Confederate soldier who wishes nothing more than to assimilate back into society and serve his country. In some cases, it only served to fan the flames and make things worse. Using his strong collection of characters and their various situations, Jakes shows that the end of the War was not the end to all issues. Literary Guild dual main selection Doubleday Book Club main selection first serial to Cosmopolitan.In the final installment of the North and South series, Jakes examines life in the United States after the Civil War. Idealism and corruption, tenderness and brutality, innocence and insanity, all figure in the narrative, a highly colored amalgam of heaven and hell, with the latter predominating.

In the Main family, there are Orry's octoroon widow Madeline, a prime target of the Klan, his unscrupulous sister Ashton and, most insistently and compellingly, Charles, whose adventures include scouting for Custer, until he becomes disgusted by the Washita Massacre, and, with Indian help, tracking the crazed abductor of his small son. The principal fictional characters threading the accurate groundwork of major national events are, on the Hazard side, steelmaker George, his abolitionist sister Virgiliastet and his corrupt, incompetent brother Stanley who (significantly) goes into politics.

The Union has triumphed but there's no peace, as radical northern Republicans seek to impose punitive rule on the South and succeed in bringing impeachment proceedings against President Johnson the Ku Klux Klan goes its ludicrous and hideous way and in the West, army generals, most notably Custer, savagely subdue the Indians. Dealing with Reconstruction as the earlier volumes dealt, respectively, with pre-Civil War rumblings and the war itself, this novel resumes the saga of the Hazards of Pennsylvania and the Mains of South Carolina, both families now sadly depleted and bound together as much by hate as love. As one might expect, this final volume in Jake's North and South trilogy makes splendid reading.

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