TC-Descendants has a web site. I haven't been using it much, but now it has gone through a serious revision recently by my brother Robin. It is now at a stage when coordinating it with reviews of TC novels, newsletters and valuable insights from newsletter readers, makes it a magnifying tool to show TCs influence on America from 1940 to 1980. Those were significant years then, and in reflection, now.

A small subset of newsletter readers are members of that website, though they may not have been paying attention to it recently. I give you the link to it below as a first (short and painless) exercise to make transparent that pieces of it are useful for this newsletter.

If I use it right it will offer interesting ways to put together the complication of TC. By that I mean, that she has two quite different periods of writing. One of which got both audience adulation and critical acclaim. Then, another period where the audience never left her completely, but the critical acclaim certainly did.

For example, the second period ends with novels, like Bright flows the River (1979), which were best sellers. That novel was on the best seller lists for many weeks. Yet, neither the LA Times nor the NY Times reviewed it in their Sunday supplements. (Correct, me, please, if I am mistaken on the latter.)

I know that for the LA Times, because I wrote Clifton Fadiman and asked him why that was the case. That was when I moved to Los Angeles a few years before the book was published. (I had not read the book. Indeed, I only knew it had been published because it was on the bestseller list.) His brief response was:
Taylor Caldwell needs no review.
To get us into the web site, I will start 'slow' and hope it works.

We go to a list of TC's best sellers

Here is the website URL. When you get there (the home page), there are tabs at the top. One of these is ''The Novels.'' If you click on that, you will see buttons to filter the categories. Try whatever you want, but I suggest first click on ''Best Sellers.'' Then, go under the list of button to a result button (click on it). This produces a list of TC's 22 bestsellers.

That list comes directly from ORs website. There is a criterion for being on that list. Reviews often measure that success by how long a book is on that list. Some of TC's remained there for many weeks, right through the '70s.

Today OR has a $2.99 promotion of The Eagles Gather. That's a book on that best seller list. Go down the list or use the find box on the upper right and find the book. The e-book is available today by clicking on the button directly below the cover. This book belongs to the series that started with Dynasty of Death. Here is the NY Times review.

The Eagles Gather (1940)

In the decade after World War I, Jules Bouchard prepares to leave controlling interest in his global munitions enterprise to his son Armand. But the inheritance comes with a warning: Armand’s ruthless brothers, Emile and Christopher, will be gunning for him.

It’s not long before Christopher commits financial treachery in an effort to unseat his brother. Worse, he hatches a plot involving his sister, Celeste, whose innocence he had vowed to always protect. While Christopher’s machinations and Armand’s countermoves threaten to tear the family apart, hope emerges from a distant relative who seems to possess the noble character of New York Times Bestseller: In the “undeniably powerful” sequel to Dynasty of Death, a new generation of Bouchards battles over the family empire (The New York Times Book Review).

We return to the newsletter

Should you want to buy a copy of the e-book at the promotional price of $2.99, a button for it is right below a copy of the book cover.

Last newsletter, I concluded with something like this. Both TC's Mediterranean novels, and her Diatribes against Evil novels evince her klaxon spleen on the topic of evil. That is the topic on which I think TC would wish to speak out today if she were still with us.

I will slowly take us into using the family website, and take up this division of her novels I alluded to above. That division gets us to her (lack of) comfort with the times through which America was passing.

After WWII when America went through many fads and phases, and then into the '60s and '70s, almost everyone could find a generation they hated. TC was articulate about that in her '60s and '70s novels. She had her own kind of venom. She also had her own personal proclivities. If you combine those two, you can almost surmise why she became the darling of the JBS.

The only thing wrong with that analysis is that TC clearly became their darling during the Macarthy Era, which centered on the '50s. Combining her views on children, motherhood, and what she herself grew up with, we find that conservatives today would find her simpatico. Yet, her issues might baffle even the most vehement of today's conservatives.

My thesis is – with that complication – TC's novels were a visceral component of what eventually defined today's conservatives. I think we'll find it helpful to use components of the family web site – by integrating them with my newsletters – to make that case.

Michael Fried, Grandson
For the Descendants of Taylor Caldwell
 We got some rain yesterday; exceedingly rare in Colorado these days. My wife bought corned beef and soda bread. Does that justify my change in gif image? Smacks of Spring, doesn't it?
Advent2.jpg
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