was born in Detroit, Michigan, on this date in 1936. The Writer’s Almanac tells her story:
[Guest’s] written three novels, each of them about adolescent children who have to deal with a crisis in their family: Second Heaven (1982), Errands (1997) and, most famously, Ordinary People (1976).
She didn’t begin writing seriously until she was in her thirties, after all of her children had begun school. She finished the manuscript of Ordinary People in 1974 and sent it to Viking Press without the usual cover letter and plot synopsis. Viking hadn’t published an unsolicited manuscript in over twenty-five years, but an editorial assistant happened to read Ordinary People and recommended it to her publishers. It was published two years later, and it became a bestseller. In 1980, Robert Redford made it into a movie, and it won the Academy Award for Best Picture.