THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 10, 1995 TAG: 9509080432
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
Williamsburg scholar Thad Tate helped best-selling author Ken Follett get the facts straight on colonial Virginia in a new historical blockbuster.
The two men of letters will speak about their collaboration on A Place Called Freedom (Crown, 416 pp., $25) tomorrow at 4 p.m. at the Williamsburg Lodge, 310 S. England St. Seats have been reserved in the auditorium for the event, but the public is invited to a book-signing in the northern lobby at 5 p.m..
``He is a pro,'' reports Tate of the Brit with the hit.
Follett, 46, remains on a 23-year roll. His early espionage thriller Eye of the Needle was an international best seller that won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America and became a film starring Kate Nelligan and Donald Sutherland. His spy novel Key to Rebecca was translated into a critically admired miniseries starring Cliff Robertson and David Soul, and Follett's best-selling account of the 1978 rescue of two business executives employed by Ross Perot, On Wings of Eagles, became a miniseries starring Richard Crenna and Burt Lancaster.
When the action man changed gears and genres in 1989 with a historical novel, The Pillars of the Earth, the story's scope was typically ambitious - concerning the construction of a cathedral in the Middle Ages - and it remained on The New York Times best-seller list 18 weeks. So much for America. The book was also No. 1 in Britain, Canada and Italy; but it stayed on the German best-seller list for two years.
So it figures Follett has great expectations for A Place, his first novel set in America. The tale of an indentured Scot servant who fights for liberation in pre-revolutionary Virginia has just been published and is already a Book of the Month Club and Quality Paperback main selection and Reader's Digest Condensed Book selection, not to mention a Random House audiobook and a large print trade paperback. It's a bodice-ripper with an education.
``People who know history will like the novel,'' maintains Tate, 71, emeritus professor of humanities at the College of William and Mary and former director of the Institute of Early American History.
He was contacted by a New York agent who assigns research to read two drafts of Follett's new novel in manuscript. Talking by phone from his home across from the William and Mary campus, Tate expressed a certain modest glee at the substantial fee. Such assignments in academic publications are more often compensated with copies of the book than with cash.
Tate made sure Follett didn't sail an ocean-going ship ``up the Rappahannock to Fredericksburg.'' He advised the author that a dramatic week-long flight across the state to the Cumberland Gap would take closer to a month with the roads the way they were - and weren't - in the 18th century. Tate also did some fine-tuning on the politics of the period as well as the geography.
But he has yet to speak to Follett.
``He worked in London,'' said Tate, ``and we were correspondents on that boon or curse of the 20th century, the fax machine. We'll meet for the first time at the lecture. It was set up to coincide with Follett's national tour.''
The self-made English millionaire will, in his two-week, seven-city American publicity blitz, also hit New York, Dallas and San Francisco. His father was a tax inspector. His own role has become one of inspecting large checks for popular literary endeavors.
Follett has said his favorite living author is Stephen King. His favorite dead one is Anthony Trollope. It makes sense that his own work is marked by an immediately accessible style - the influence of the former - and a panoramic populace of interrelating characters - the stamp of the latter.
He has also affirmed that he has never been one to believe the best things in life are free.
``I always had a yearning to be rich and famous,'' Follett told Hello!, the gossipy English equivalent of People magazine.
Whatever the reception for A Place, he will remain both. And Tate will remain an admired and distinguished scholar. But the picky professor emeritus admits to some suspense about the enormously public nature of the project.
``Now,'' Tate said, ``I live in apprehension that there are things I should have found and didn't.''
- MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Ken Follett will speak tomorrow at the Williamsburg Lodge.
by CNB