Colleen McCullough | 'Thorn Birds' author, 77
Colleen McCullough, 77, author of the bestselling novel The Thorn Birds , died Thursday. She had suffered from ill health in recent years and died in a hospital on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific.
Colleen McCullough, 77, author of the bestselling novel
The Thorn Birds
, died Thursday. She had suffered from ill health in recent years and died in a hospital on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific.
Although she wrote more than two dozen books, she was best known for The Thorn Birds, about a tragic romance. Published in 1977, it became an international sensation, selling more than 30 million copies. It was adapted into a television miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain and Rachel Ward that won six Emmys.
Ms. McCullough was born in Australia and studied neurophysiology. She was working as a research associate in Yale University's neurology department when she wrote her first novel, Tim, and finished the manuscript for The Thorn Birds.
The novel, about a priest's affair with the wife of a rancher in Australia in the early 20th century, raised Ms. McCullough's profile so much that she felt she had to quit her research job. "There were threats, and all sorts of weirdos popping out," she told the Los Angeles Times in 1990.
Ms. McCullough often switched genres, writing historical novels set in Rome, crime novels set in the 1960s in the U.S., and a science fiction novel titled The Third Millennium. - L.A. Times