The book captured the imagination of millions when it was first published in 1977, and its popularity has never abated. 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.

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.

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