The Turnbulls

by Taylor Caldwell

The "darkly exuberant and passionate" saga of a man who flees Victorian England in disgrace--only to build an empire of corruption in America (The New York Times).

The son of a wealthy English merchant, John Turnbull's destiny appears to be a life of gentlemanly leisure. His path: graduate from his fashionable school and marry his beautiful cousin, Eugenia, whom he loves. Yet, one wild night, a jealous classmate tricks him into making a fateful mistake.

Forced to give up his former life, Turnbull sails for America. He soon falls in with the unscrupulous businessman Mr. Wilkins. Together, they steal patents, smuggle contraband through the Southern blockade during the Civil War, run guns to Japan, and finance the opium trade. But as Turnbull amasses a fortune large enough to vanquish his most powerful enemies, he doesn't realize his gravest threat comes from within his own family.

Packed with fascinating period details, The Turnbulls is a mesmerizing family drama from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Captains and the Kings and Dynasty of Death.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical

517 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Also known by the pen names Marcus Holland and Max Reiner.

Taylor Caldwell was born in Manchester, England. In 1907 she emigrated to the United States with her parents and younger brother. Her father died shortly after the move, and the family struggled. At the age of eight she started to write stories, and in fact wrote her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, at the age of twelve (although it remained unpublished until 1975). Her father did not approve such activity for women, and sent her to work in a bindery. She continued to write prolifically, however, despite ill health. (In 1947, according to TIME magazine, she discarded and burned the manuscripts of 140 unpublished novels.)

In 1918-1919, she served in the United States Navy Reserve. In 1919 she married William F. Combs. In 1920, they had a daughter, Mary (known as "Peggy"). From 1923 to 1924 she was a court reporter in New York State Department of Labor in Buffalo, New York. In 1924, she went to work for the United States Department of Justice, as a member of the Board of Special Inquiry (an immigration tribunal) in Buffalo. In 1931 she graduated from SUNY Buffalo, and also was divorced from William Combs.

Caldwell then married her second husband, Marcus Reback, a fellow Justice employee. She had a second child with Reback, a daughter Judith, in 1932. They were married for 40 years, until his death in 1971.

In 1934, she began to work on the novel Dynasty of Death, which she and Reback completed in collaboration. It was published in 1938 and became a best-seller. "Taylor Caldwell" was presumed to be a man, and there was some public stir when the author was revealed to be a woman. Over the next 43 years, she published 42 more novels, many of them best-sellers. For instance, This Side of Innocence was the biggest fiction seller of 1946. Her works sold an estimated 30 million copies. She became wealthy, traveling to Europe and elsewhere, though she still lived near Buffalo.

Her books were big sellers right up to the end of her career. During her career as a writer, she received several awards.

She was an outspoken conservative and for a time wrote for the John Birch Society's monthly journal American Opinion and even associated with the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby. Her memoir, On Growing Up Tough, appeared in 1971, consisting of many edited-down articles from American Opinion.

Around 1970, she became interested in reincarnation. She had become friends with well-known occultist author Jess Stearn, who suggested that the vivid detail in her many historical novels was actually subconscious recollection of previous lives. Supposedly, she agreed to be hypnotized and undergo "past-life regression" to disprove reincarnation. According to Stearn's book, The Search of a Soul - Taylor Caldwell's Psychic Lives, Caldwell instead began to recall her own past lives - eleven in all, including one on the "lost continent" of Lemuria.

In 1972, she married William Everett Stancell, a retired real estate developer, but divorced him in 1973. In 1978, she married William Robert Prestie, an eccentric Canadian 17 years her junior. This led to difficulties with her children. She had a long dispute with her daughter Judith over the estate of Judith's father Marcus; in 1979 Judith committed suicide.

Also in 1979, Caldwell suffered a stroke, which left her unable to speak, though she could still write. (She had been deaf since about 1965.) Her daughter Peggy accused Prestie of abusing and exploiting Caldwell, and there was a legal battle over her substantial assets.

She died of heart failure in Greenwich, Conn

Reviews

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another seemingly-endless Caldwell family saga from the 1940s, and she was still only getting warmed-up to produce many more in a similar vein, the trials and tribulations of a family against the 19th-century industrialization of America. Like many of her novels, it is shot-through with bitterness and anger, and as most of us probably know, in a Caldwell novel, a family is usually not a happy thing to be part of. Also, she spends a great deal of time (and verbiage) describing what her characters do or do not feel, what they do or do not know (about themselves or other characters) and so on, instead of demonstrating such qualities by actions. Supposedly this was something Scribners editor Maxwell Perkins worked on with her during the editing and rewriting of DYNASTY OF DEATH six years earlier - perhaps by the time this novel was produced, in 1943, he'd given up the fight.

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un libro que he tenido desde hace años en mi librero. Años. Y recién me animé a leerlo. No diré que es excelente, porque no me lo pareció, pero tampoco es malo. Es como estar en medio, pues sí me mantuvo entretenida.
Me gustaron mucho las descripciones a pesar de que a algunas personas detesten esto, a mí me pareció que estaban muy bien hechas y que aportaban a los escenarios y eventos de la historia (= no eran simples descripciones porque sí)
Sin embargo, es un libro bastante largo, no es tan ligero de leer a no ser que uno se siente y lea dos o tres capítulos de corrido, como hice un día que tenía libre.
Otro punto en contra es que aunque no se me hizo difícil seguir el estilo de la autora, es un libro que tiene un final un poco vago. Ignoro si esto es parte de una saga o hay una segunda parte; es lo que da a entender, entonces estoy un poco confundida. Me gustaría leer la continuación porque no sé qué planea Mr. Wilkins y si Anthony le hará caso o no, y la historia de John, Lillybelle y Adelaida. Sus hermanas se pueden desaparecer por lo que me importa... así que como dije, un final vago. Si ese fue el final, pues sí me quedó debiendo.
Algo que noté es el lenguaje que se usaba en esa época y la necesidad de llamar "pequeña tontita" o "muchachita linda y tontita" a las chicas en este libro. Entiendo que es de un periodo diferente de tiempo al actual pero igual, debo admitir que sí me frustraba mucho leer eso constantemente, sobre todo viniendo de los novios o esposos... me sacaba temporalmente de mis casillas y me hacía renegar.
Fuera de eso, me parece un buen libro y una buena opción para la literatura de la época.

[Devaki Khanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

When John Turnbull is expelled from the gentleman's academy he's attending, he decides to marry his fiancée Eugenia and take off for America. But Eugenia refuses because her mother is unwell. John then goes off to a tavern he frequents with fellow students from the academy, where Andrew Bollister, who's pretending to be his friend, gets him drunk and married to the barmaid. When John's father learns of this, he gives him a hundred pounds and buys him and his wife, Lilybelle, a passage to America. It is on this ship that John and his wife meet Bob Wilkins, who has such an impact on their life in America.

Bob, who's been involved in several less-than-honest ways to make a quick buck, gets John embroiled in his schemes. Although John becomes wealthy, he's not a happy man. His two older daughters marry men who scheme to take all he has built away from him, while his youngest daughter, Adelaide, tries to warn and save her father.

John is a more Fieldingesque hero compared to those in the Barbour & Bouchard series. It's also set in the early part of the Gilded Age (1855-1880). There's a Lear-like quality to John's relationship with his older girls, and Adelaide, as the youngest and least favorite daughter, has a Cinderella-like storyline.

Although this is a long book, it's not easy to put down one you begin.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been many years since I read a book by Taylor Caldwell, and I now know why she has endured. She is a master at description. The book is long, and she prepares the reader well when meeting characters. She spends much time introducing the characters with ample description. This book was obviously about "The Turnbulls." Specifically, it was about the life of John Turnbull, the son of a wealthy nobleman in England. John is sent to the US after getting into difficulties in England. He is a ruthless young man with much ambition. He is destined to live a self-abusive lifestyle because of his own hatred of self. John's love interest, Eugenia, follows John to the US with her husband, but mainly because she still loved John. John marries a woman of ignoble birth, and he spends nearly 30 years of his life hating her. He dotes on his first two daughter, Lavinia and Louisa, but practically hates the third daughter. The book follows John and his family for nearly 40 years through much tragedy. I did like the end, though. I enjoyed this book even though it wasn't a masterpiece.

[Priscilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

A saga da família Turnbull.

Amor com Amor se Paga é o título ambíguo escolhido para a publicação de The Turnbulls - basicamente, mais uma uma história de amor frustrado e vingança por um homem inglês/estadunidense que teve sua vida revirada ao se apaixonar por uma e casar com outra.

Toda e qualquer semelhança com Gatsby não é mera coincidência.

Esse é um tema bem batido em livros de romance, mas Caldwell extende a história por quase quinhentas páginas onde a maioria das descrições implicam o conhecimento de pensamentos e emoções que nunca são refletidas em ações.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very Much a Novel of Its Time

This book, published in 1943, is engaging but difficult to read. The style is old fashioned and the theme is particularly heavy handed. Despite that, the plot is interesting as are the relationships between the characters. The book ended abruptly with the suggestion of a sequel to slate the rise and fall of the next generation.

[Sherry Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great insights

No one can portray human frailty like Taylor Caldwell! This is another of her deep portrayal of a family that loves, betrays in the midst of greed and pure evil!

[Cristina · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Lesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read -