Jonathan Yeager

From Turtledove

Jonathan Yeager (b. 1943) was conceived on the wedding night of Sam Yeager and Barbara Larssen Yeager in Chugwater, Wyoming . The couple was passing through Chugwater with the United States' atomic bomb program, which had been forced to abandon the University of Chicago some months earlier when Chicago fell to the Race. Barbara's pregnancy led her to remain with Sam after she discovered that her first husband, Jens Larssen, was still alive. Jonathan was born during the war against the Race, and accompanied his parents across wartorn American territory to wherever Sam's services as an emerging expert on the Race and as the guard responsible for Ullhass and Ristin.

The Yeagers settled in Southern California after the war ended, and it was there that Jonathan grew up. He attended UCLA and studied the Race, hoping to emulate his father's wildly successful career in that field. In his youth he embraced his generation's fad for emulating the Race by shaving all his hair and wearing body paint.

Jonathan spent several weeks aboard a Lizard starship in Earth orbit, where he became intimate with Kassquit, to the fury of his longtime girlfriend and fellow Race student Karen. This created a long-standing feud between Karen and Kassquit which was still going strong decades later, and Karen never fully trusted Jonathan's assurances that he was no longer attracted to Kassquit.

During his stay aboard Kassquit's starship, which was extended due to space flight disruptions caused by the Race-German War of 1965, Jonathan nearly became a casualty of war when Johannes Drucker nearly destroyed the ship with a nuclear missile.

Jonathan married Karen in 1965. They had two sons, and they adopted Mickey and Donald after Sam Yeager went into cold sleep in preparation for the United States' first expedition to Home.

Jonathan's career was successful but he felt he was always living in the shadow of his father, a legend in the field. Both he and Karen were chosen for the US's mission and traveled to Home aboard the Admiral Peary, where they were reunited with Sam. Jonathan and Karen both served with the American diplomatic mission, assisting Sam, who became ambassador with the death of Dr Henry Kissinger. When the Commodore Perry arrived to relieve them and attempted to deny Sam a return journey to Earth, both Jonathan and Karen refused to leave without him, as did the rest of the diplomatic mission.

On returning to Earth and being reunited with their sons (as well as their grandchildren and great-grandchildren) both Jonathan and Karen were offered book deals to write memoirs of their journey. Of course, neither book was as anticipated as Sam's. Jonathan and Karen were culture shocked to see how much Southern California had changed in their absence.