


How?Ī sprawling romance which begins in the Australian outback and stretches over many years and many miles, The Thorn Birds is the story of a tortured love between a beautiful woman and a Roman Catholic priest. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. And it was during that time that she wrote her first novel, Tim - followed by the book which would make her famous: The Thorn Birds.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Thorn Birds Author Colleen McCullough Trained as a neuroscientist, she became a researcher, which led to a job at Yale University. She had hoped to be a doctor, but while in medical school in Sydney she developed an allergy that forced her to abandon that dream. No doubt that planted the seeds that led to her life as writer.īut McCullough took a circuitous route to becoming a best selling author. without having to live on the same continent." But as often happens in unhappy childhoods, McCullough found refuge in books. Her father was abusive, and her relationship with her mother was so bad that as an adult she moved to Norfolk Island, a remote Australian territory, because - as she once told an interviewer - she could be "close enough to keep an eye on her family. McCullough was best known for her novel The Thorn Birds, a huge hugely popular romance which has sold 30 million copies around the world, and has never gone out of print.īy her own account, McCullough had a lousy childhood. A damaged and decorated hero, a man of secrets and silent pain, soon he alone possesses Honour's selfless heart - inciting tense and volatile passions that can only lead to jealousy, violence, and death.See photos for additional content.Colleen McCullough at home on Australia's remote Norfolk Island in 1990 - she told an interviewer she moved there to escape her difficult family.Īustralian writer Colleen McCullough died Thursday she was 77 years old. Then Michael Wilson arrives under a cloud of mystery and shame to change everything.

AN INDECENT OBSESSION - To the battle-broken soldiers In her care, nurse Honour Langtry is a precious, adored reminder of the world before war.

The complex, passionate plot, along with McCullough's vivid descriptions of the Australian outback, made the book a best-seller-and the movie made from it in 1983 a huge success. THE THORN BIRDS - Colleen McCullough's wildly popular epic blockbuster, first published in 1977, follows the fortunes of the Cleary family over three generations, but concentrates mainly on Meggie and her passionate, obsessive love for a Catholic priest, Father Ralph. A bit scuffed but all pages intact and legible. Please see any and all photos connected with this listing.
