Novels, stories and nonfiction to be taken to beaches, mountains and hammocks
CHESAPEAKE by James A. Michener
Random House; 865 pages; $12.95
Another blockbuster, from the maker of Hawaii, Centennial and Iberia.
Once again the reader receives good value, at roughly 1½¢ per page, in a succession of tableaux, more or less vivants. Each represents a scene from the social history of Chesapeake Bay.
James Michener's virtue is a powerful sense of place and the ability to convey great sweeps of time. His weakness is an insistence on covering murals with so much background and foreground...