"J" is for Jakes, John [born 1932]. Novelist. Born in Illinois, Jakes is a nationally known best-selling novelist and historian. For the past several decades he has maintained his primary residence on Hilton Head Island. After graduating from college, he spent a number of years working for pharmaceutical and advertising companies.
Then, in 1973 he published the first of eight volumes of the Kent Family Chronicles—a series that depicted the American Revolution through the eyes of one fictional family. Between 1982 and 1987 he produced a trilogy on the Civil War that featured the fictional South Carolina family, the Horrys. More than 60 million copies of these eleven novels are currently in print. In 2002, John Jakes published Charleston, his first full-length historical novel based on this history of his adopted state.
