Jeff Shaara remembers the moment that emotion overcame his father on a Civil War battlefield.
The late Michael Shaara, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic The Killer Angels, was touring Gettysburg together with his son. A guide led them up Pickett’s Charge, the uphill path the Confederates took toward the Union Army’s guns. The battlefield visitors stepped over what was once a stone wall and found a Confederate flag planted in the ground. That, the guide passionately told them, was where General Armistead fell (and died from his wounds two days later). That point is considered the “high-water mark of the Confederacy.”
The elder Shaara fell to the ground and wept.
“My dad had no interest in history,” Jeff Shaara told guest host Ed Tracy, an award-winning television producer and founding Director of the Pritzker Military Library, before a packed audience at the National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan, on June 2. “He was a storyteller. And at Gettysburg he realized there was a story.”
The Killer Angels was Michael Shaara’s 1974 historical novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, a turning point in the Civil War. It was adapted into the epic 1993 film Gettysburg, which was produced by media mogul and Civil War buff Ted Turner. The elder Shaara died of heart failure in 1988, just shy of his 60th birthday.
Jeff Shaara picked up his father’s mantle, publishing several historical fiction books about the nation’s seminal conflict, including Gods and Generals and two novels that complete the Civil War trilogy that began with The Killer Angels. He appeared in Traverse City to kick off a lengthy tour for his new book, The Fateful Lightning. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War.
The late Michael Shaara, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic The Killer Angels, was touring Gettysburg together with his son. A guide led them up Pickett’s Charge, the uphill path the Confederates took toward the Union Army’s guns. The battlefield visitors stepped over what was once a stone wall and found a Confederate flag planted in the ground. That, the guide passionately told them, was where General Armistead fell (and died from his wounds two days later). That point is considered the “high-water mark of the Confederacy.”
The elder Shaara fell to the ground and wept.
“My dad had no interest in history,” Jeff Shaara told guest host Ed Tracy, an award-winning television producer and founding Director of the Pritzker Military Library, before a packed audience at the National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan, on June 2. “He was a storyteller. And at Gettysburg he realized there was a story.”
The Killer Angels was Michael Shaara’s 1974 historical novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, a turning point in the Civil War. It was adapted into the epic 1993 film Gettysburg, which was produced by media mogul and Civil War buff Ted Turner. The elder Shaara died of heart failure in 1988, just shy of his 60th birthday.
Jeff Shaara picked up his father’s mantle, publishing several historical fiction books about the nation’s seminal conflict, including Gods and Generals and two novels that complete the Civil War trilogy that began with The Killer Angels. He appeared in Traverse City to kick off a lengthy tour for his new book, The Fateful Lightning. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War.
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