For though he described himself as a humanist, and though he was certainly clear-sighted and scrupulous in exposing the failings of individual churches in the past, the strong sense of ethics we find everywhere in Michener's work seems to me to have a religious base. It's there in the moral outlook of the books also. I'm not sure that people have sufficiently picked up on this aspect of Michener's legacy, and I shall be interested to see if future writing on Michener does so.

His linking of a dramatic episode in some humble person's life to the great sweep of history is, to me, biblical. I, certainly, can think of no literary antecedent for this - except one, which I suppose would have been a part of the familiar literary heritage for anyone of his generation, or indeed of mine, and that is the Bible.

So far as I know, it was Michener who invented the genre in which he wrote - the highly researched novel, tracing the history of a single location down many centuries, through the stories of fictional families. He had been particularly impressed by The Source and The Covenant. I was still a teenager when my father, knowing of my desire to write novels and my delight in history, suggested that I should look at James Michener's work. Michener are the direct inspiration that led to the novels of Edward Rutherfurd and I am happy to confirm that fact.

The Source by James A. Michener