The Seekers (novel)
1st edition (1975)
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| Author | John Jakes |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Kent Family Chronicles |
| Genre | Historical fiction |
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Publication date
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1975 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 544 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | The Rebels |
| Followed by | The Furies |
The Seekers is a historical novel written by John Jakes and originally published in 1975. It is book three in a series known as the Kent Family Chronicles or the American Bicentennial Series. The novel mixes fictional characters with historical events and figures, as it narrates the story of the United States of America from 1794 through 1814. In 1979, the novel was made into a television film by Operation Prime Time and premiered on HBO on July 8, 1979, The Seekers.
The story begins in 1794, at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, in the Northwest Territory. Abraham Kent, the son of Philip Kent and Anne Ware, had enlisted in the Legion of the United States to help neutralize the threat of American Indians against expanding white settlements. He led a cavalry charge in the battle, but let a chance to kill Tecumseh slip away.
Philip Kent, his father, had grown affluent as the proprietor of the publishing firm, Kent and Son in Boston, and would have preferred to have Abraham follow him into the family business; however, Abraham was not interested in that trade and was uncertain what he wanted to do in life. Politically, father and son also had diverging views. Philip supported the Federalists, a party more friendly to urban industrialists, but Abraham did not.
Abraham fell in love with Elizabeth Fletcher, his stepsister, the illegitimate daughter of Judson Fletcher and Peggy Ashford McLean Kent. Philip had married Peggy after the death of his first wife, but never adopted Elizabeth as his own daughter. Elizabeth, who had inherited her late father's rebelliousness, resented him for this and did not want to live by his conservative rules. Sharing a common desire to leave Boston and Philip, Abraham and Elizabeth married in 1796 and planned to start a new life in the Northwest Territory. They purchased a tract of land on the Great Miami River, near Fort Hamilton, though Abraham feared that his young wife was too frail to make the journey. Along the way Elizabeth revealed that she was pregnant, but she lost the baby when their riverboat crashed in the Ohio River.
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