Blog 3782 – 03.20.2026

Captains and the Kings

On my drive to our property in the East Texas Piney Woods and back yesterday I began listening to an Audible book, Captains and the Kings by Taylor Caldwell. It is a long time favorite of mine and since I watched the NBC mini-series made from the book in the mid-nineteen seventies I have read the book seven or eight times. 

It is an epic novel about an Irishman, Joseph Francis Xavier Armagh who at a very young age is orphaned and left to provide for his younger brother and baby sister in a strange new country at the outbreak of the Civil War.

Joseph desperately wants to become rich so he can get his brother and sister out of the orphanage run by Roman Catholic nuns and provide a home for them and find a quiet life. Joe willing to do anything to realize this dream for his family and himself of a quiet life of abundance and luxury.

In my six hour drive round trip I hear the first ten chapters of the book. Joseph has just become acquainted with a rich and powerful Irish man who will tutor him and help him realize his goal of great riches and power with it.

The quiet life Joe seeks sadly he never fully realizes though he does find love if but briefly.

The Irish immigrants of Joseph’s time were not welcomed by most Americans. They were shunned and derided for their poverty, their strange accents and religion. A hundred years later with John F. Kennedy, Joseph’s new country elected its first Irish Catholic President.

Taylor Caldwell used the Kennedy Family as a template for this fictional Irish family. I highly recommend this book. This is the first time I have had it read to me and the young woman reading it does a wonderful job of voicing each of the characters. I look forward to my next long drive.

The book begins with a quote from a poem written by Rudyard Kipling for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee called Recessional:

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White