Chesapeake is historical fiction. The story spans 400 years and follows multiple generations of families in the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland. While the locations and families are largely fictional, the book walks through American history. Starting with American Indian tribes, it moves through tobacco farming, slavery, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and Watergate.

The book’s point of view shifts through various characters, each with a different view of what America should be. It explains the histories, cultures, and thinking of the different peoples who made America, so we can better understand how they’ve come to look at things differently