Just finished John Jakes' "On Secret Service". Jakes has always been one of my favorite authors, and this book didn't disappoint me, either. The book is set in the Civil War era, and focuses on the birth of the American Intelligence agencies and the Presidential protection detail.
The book centers aroung four mail characters: Lon Price, Margaret Miller, Fred Dasher, and Hannah Siegel.
Price is a Northern abolitionist and son of a Baptist minister, who works for the Pinkerton Detective agency, a private company that basically evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency and the Secret Service.
Margaret Miller is a Southern sympathizer, daughter of an abolitionist newspaper publisher from Baltimore (where there was a large pocket of pro-Southern sympathy), living in the Nation's capital, who becomes involved in Confederate intelligence.
Hannah Siegel, a very good friend of Margaret Miller, is the daughter of an Austrian military officer who immigrated to the United States and gains employment with the Federal War Department. Her father, a widower, never bothered to hide his disappointment that he didn't have a son to follow in his military footprints, so Hannah, who is an actress, decides to try the most challenging role of her career, a male soldier in the Union army.
Fred Dasher of Virginia is a graduate of West Point (and a minor character in Jakes' prior tour-de-force, the North and South trilogy), who joins the Confederate army out of allegiance to his beloved home state. As a delightful aside, those of us who loved the North and South books are gratified to find a couple of the characters from that series reintroduced, in minor roles, through Dasher.
Through the various twists of plot, Lon and Margaret and Fred and Hannah meet and fall in love with one another. It is the compassion that we feel for these characters, who are pulled in one direction by the dedication to their respective governments and their causes, and in the other direction by the feeling that they have for each other that makes this book so very enjoyable, much as the love and respect that the Main family from the South and the Hazard family from the North had for each other in spite of their regional differences made the North and South books work so very well.
