Barbara Taylor Bradford, who will keynote the annual roundup of the League of Utah Writers tonight, has been a prominent fiction writer for a long time. Her first book, "A Woman of Substance," which became part of a trilogy, was published in England 25 years ago. Not only is that book still in print, but 20 million copies were sold through early 2002, making it one of the top 10 best-selling fiction books in history.
Born and bred in England, Barbara Taylor grew up a voracious reader. In a phone interview from her home in New York, Bradford said that she was introduced to books by her mother at the age of 5. "By the time I was 12, I had read all the works of Dickens and the Brontes. I sold my first story when I was 10 years old. My mother sent it to The Children's Magazine, and three months later a money order came in the amount of 10 shillings and six pence. When I saw my name on the story, 'Katie and Her Little Horse,' my future was sealed. I told my mother I wanted to write books when I grew up."
She worked as a journalist in London until she met and married Robert Bradford, an American film producer, and moved to New York. She has now finished her 19th novel, "Emma's Secret," published this summer in England and already a best seller there. The book will be published in the United States in January.
With this book, she has reached full circle: Emma, a character who died in her first book, is the focal point of the new book.
"There is never inspiration for writing a book," Bradford said. "I find it is sheer hard work plotting out a book, but I do get a sudden snap in my head when the character occurs to me. I had such public demand to bring Emma back, but I had killed her off earlier. How do you bring back a dead character? It suddenly occurred to me that the family stumbles onto a family secret connected to Emma."
So Bradford created the character of "a young American woman, 27 years old, around whom the secret swirls."
"The secret is a good device," she said. "The great-grandchildren will be affected by the secret. They find a suitcase in the attic full of war-time diaries from World War II. At first they don't look in it because they think it is an invasion of privacy. Later, they look into the diaries. So the reader turns a page and suddenly you're in London with Emma in 1940. She is coping with the war years. I can't tell the secret until the last part of the book."
This book will also be part of a trilogy. Bradford will continue the story in "Unexpected Blessings" and round out the story with "Just Rewards." According to Bradford, "Emma's Secret" in manuscript form was over 800 pages. "It ended up a 500-page book. Publishers keep saying, 'Write a bit shorter. We can fit more on the shelves.' "
Bradford considers herself "a natural storyteller. My friends tell me something and I say, 'There's a book in that.' Wherever I turn I see a story. Maybe it's my journalistic background. I'm a better writer for having grown up in newspapers. It taught me about deadlines and research. You develop a psychological insight into people. You also need imagination. You need to be able to tell a lot of lies. The novel is a monumental lie that needs the absolute ring of truth to succeed."
If you go
What: Barbara Taylor Bradford
Where: Ogden Plaza Hotel
When: 7 p.m. tonight
How much: free for League of Utah Writers; $50 for non-members
E-MAIL: dennis@desnews.com