Soapbox: At Last

You're an overnight success,” a friend remarked when I told her I had made the New York Times bestseller list. Just a week after my book Prayers for Sale was published on April 14, I was #12 on the Times's fiction list. The book hit #11 on PW's list. But overnight success? I'm 70. I've been a writer for 50 years. “If this is overnight success, I'm glad I'm not slow,” I replied.

Still, success at any age is exciting, and perhaps it's sweeter when it is so long in coming. For me, bestsellerdom is due in large part to my novel's selection as a Barnes & Noble Recommends selection. The bookseller featured Prayers for Sale on its Web site and set up prominent displays in retail stores. The book was also an Indie Next List pick, which means excellent exposure in independent bookstores.

This success is the sort of thing you dream about as a writer, just as when you're a kid, you believe that someday you'll be named Miss America or accept the Academy Award. (I still have the speech for that one.) In the beginning, I knew I had plenty of time. The first of my 10 nonfiction books, a work about Colorado history, was published when I was just 26. Because most historical works about the west in those days were written by old boys, I became the ingénue of western history. My heroine back then was French writer Françoise Sagan, whose first novel, Bonjour Tristesse, was published when she was only 18. By the time the first of my eight novels, Buster Midnight's Café, was published, however, I was 50 and became a sort of AARP poster girl.

Of course, I'm not the first hoary writer to make the bestseller lists for the first time. After all, there isn't mandatory retirement for writers. They can write until they're senile—and beyond, which is sometimes the case. Pulitzer Prize—winning author Frank McCourt was 66 when Angela's Ashes was published, and Norman Maclean in his mid-70s when A River Runs Through It came out. British author Penelope Fitzgerald was 78 when she hit it big with The Blue Flower. And remember the Delany sisters, Sarah and Elizabeth, who published their bestselling Having Our Say when they were 103 and 101.

My age does pose something of a problem for my publisher, St. Martin's. Oh, I can hobble off to book signings and speak in public without drooling. But there was serious discussion about whether we should reveal how old I am. Some readers favor younger writers. A successful author friend wears a hat in his author photos to disguise his age. (In my case, the photographer who takes my book jacket photos—she also happens to be my daughter—is a whiz at Photoshop.) I've gotten used to people telling me their mothers love my books, but I'm a little nonplussed that more and more now say it's their grandmothers who read them.

“It is interesting to readers that your major success came when you were 70,” one publicist told me, arguing in favor of going public with the truth. She might have found my age an intriguing publicity hook, but I was ambivalent about blabbing it. Of course, I wanted the attention. Still, I wondered if the revelation boded well for the future. I have a novel scheduled for publication next year, and another the year after that, and I have plans for several more. I don't want reviewers writing that I've lost it, that my mind is gone, that it's time for me to hang it up. I don't want to be the Charlton Heston of the literary world.

But maybe nobody really cares. I'll see how it goes. For now, I'll just bask in the glory, although pleased as I am, I do have a couple of regrets. I once spoke at a writers' conference with Tony Hillerman, who died last year at age 83. He began publishing his bestselling mysteries, set on the Navajo Reservation, in middle age. Why, he asked, couldn't fame and fortune have happened to him when he was younger? I feel the same way. Why couldn't I have made the bestseller lists at 50?

And there's another thing: although I'm enormously grateful that I made the bestseller list at all, I'm sorry no one can say, “And she did it so young.”