Fame & Fortune: Author Jeff Shaara 'Gods and Generals' author expands his father's legacy By Jay MacDonald • Bankrate.com

Like father, like son, Jeff Shaara follows his father, Michael, into the trenches of America's bloodiest battles to craft elegant, compassionate, historical novels told from the soldier's point of view. But avocation aside, Jeff Shaara and his late father actually had very little in common.

Michael grew up in New Jersey, lived on coffee and cigarettes, sacrificed his health for his art, became bitter from rejection and never knew fame or fortune. His Civil War masterpiece, "The Killer Angels," which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1975, topped the best-seller lists only after the Ted Turner film adaptation "Gettysburg" hit theaters, five years after his death.

Jeff Shaara, by contrast, grew up in sunny Tallahassee, Fla., parlayed a childhood love of rare coins into the Florida Coin Exchange, one of the most prominent precious-metals dealers in Florida, studied criminology and never gave a thought to writing.

After his father's death, Jeff sold his business and assumed control of his father's estate. His knack for commerce soon paid off. He unearthed one of his father's forgotten manuscripts, found a publisher, closed a movie deal and "For Love of the Game" became a 1999 hit for Kevin Costner.

When "Gettysburg" director Ron Maxwell broached the idea of finding someone to write a prequel and sequel to "The Killer Angels," Jeff decided to try his hand. His bookend novels, "Gods and Generals" and "The Last Full Measure," became critical and commercial successes, despite the author's lack of previous writing experience.

Shaara continued his best-seller streak with novels about the Mexican-American War ("Gone for Soldiers"), the American Revolution ("Rise to Rebellion," "The Glorious Cause") and, most recently, "The Rising Tide," the first of a planned quartet on World War II.

Bankrate traced Shaara to his home in Tallahassee, Fla., to talk about art, commerce and coin collecting.

Bankrate: We don't find many novelists who were successful businessmen.

Jeff Shaara: Right. Those things are usually mutually exclusive. My father fits that description exactly. But at 16 years old, I started a mail-order rare-coin business and put myself through college with that. People always ask me what my degree was in, the assumption being it's probably history or something like that, but my degree from Florida State was in criminology. I never used it because I was actually making more money in my rare coin business than I would have made working for the state in law enforcement, which is what I wanted to do. My diploma looks real nice hanging on the wall, but I'm not a good advertisement for a college education.