Johanna Lindsey | |
---|---|
Born | Johanna Helen Howard March 10, 1952 Frankfurt, West Germany |
Died | October 27, 2019 Nashua, New Hampshire, U.S. | (aged 67)
Pen name | Johanna Lindsey |
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | American |
Period | 1977–2019 |
Genre | Historical Romance |
Spouse | Ralph Lindsey |
Children | 3 |
Johanna Helen Lindsey (née Howard, March 10, 1952 – October 27, 2019)[1] was an American writer of historical romance novels. All of her books reached the New York Times bestseller list, many reaching No. 1.
Johanna Helen Howard was born on March 10, 1952, in Frankfurt, West Germany. Her mother was Wanda Donaldson Howard, a personnel management specialist.[2] Her father was Edwin Dennis Howard, a soldier in the U.S. Army, stationed in West Germany, where she was born. The Howard family moved about a great deal when she was young due to her father's military career.[clarification needed]
Her father always dreamed of retiring to Hawaii, but he died in 1964. That year, her family moved to Hawaii, likely to honor his wish.[3]
In 1970, when she was still in school, she married Ralph Bruce Lindsey, becoming a young housewife. The marriage continued, the couple residing in Hawaii and producing three children; Alfred, Joseph and Garret, who have made her a grandmother. After her husband's death, Lindsey moved to Maine and did not remarry.
Lindsey wrote her first book, Captive Bride, in 1977 "on a whim".[3] The book was a success, as have been the forty-nine novels that followed. As of 2006 more than fifty-eight million copies of her books had been sold worldwide, and her work has been translated into twelve languages.
Owing to their diversity of settings Lindsey's work covers a number of romance subgenres, including historical fiction (medieval, Regency, American frontier, and Viking eras) and science fiction. Her most popular books[according to whom?] are a series of Regency sagas about the fictional Malory family (see Family Tree).
Richard Sandomir of The New York Times explained,
Lindsey set her passionate tales in many locales, including the Caribbean; the Barbary Coast; England as early as the year 873; Norway, when the Vikings ruled; 19th-century Texas, Wyoming and Montana; and the planet Kystran, in a series of science-fiction bodice-rippers.[4]