Ellen Kelm News Today

John Jakes, a superstar writer of historical fiction whose generational family sagas of the American Revolution and the Civil War mingled real and imaginary characters and became runaway bestsellers and popular television fare, died Saturday at a hospice facility in Sarasota, Florida. He was 90.

His sagas of the Revolution and the Civil War sold tens of millions of copies, were adapted for TV and put him in the pantheon of big-name authors.