KayseyKritter

When this premiered on HBO, I watched it so many times. I had never heard of the story before, but I am so grateful that this event in history happened. Because of the events portrayed in the movie, people (including me) have been able to have heart surgery as children to survive and enjoy the world. Before this surgery performed in the movie, no one had ever even attempted to do heart surgery. It also helped with angioplasty and all other heart operations. It is also sad to see how Vivien had to struggle with racial issues while learning to do the surgery. And I think it is way cool that he was able to do this without a degree in medicine.

After watching the first 2 books, this was a bad one. But book 2 totally strayed from the actual story. If Book 2 would not have strayed so far, this story would have made sense in conjunction with the others. I thought this story was well done. It showed a lot of the problems that existed with the Reconstruction era, and the problems associated with a Democratic president from the south, and the Radical Republicans in power in Congress, who were previously all abolitionists before the war. I do think it was weird for George Hazard and Madeline to marry after the death of their spouses. Also they used a different actor for Charles Main. After seeing the same actor for the 2 previous books, they should have tried to get the original guy back. In the whole trilogy, they also used 3 different women for Isabel Hazard, and also 3 different men for Billy Hazard. That's confusing for those who have seen this whole trilogy over and over.

I saw this miniseries on the Family Channel many years ago (you can tell, because since then it has changed its name quite a few times since then). Anyway, I really enjoyed it. But this past summer, I bought the whole book trilogy, and was disappointed how different the books were from the miniseries. Both book I and book II were different, but Book II was more so. Cooper and his family are not mentioned in the movies at all. Madeline never had a son Nicholas, or even met with someone to discuss leaving her husband. For those of you who may be confused, I am talking about her son Nicholas, who she had from Orry, and she went to DC the one time to talk to her uncle (or some other close relative) about leaving Orry because of her heritage. In the books Bent is not mentioned as being related to Madeline. In the first book, the Prologue is totally missed in the miniseries. I think it would have been neat to see how the families' paths had crossed before in the 1700s. I was just really frustrated at how the outcome of the movie was totally different than the book.