Prolific romance writer Nora Roberts owes her career to a blizzard and a bad case of cabin fever. In 1979, while snowed in with her two young sons at their home in Maryland, Roberts decided to try writing down one of the stories she had made up in her mind since childhood. She put pencil to paper and the result, according to Roberts, "was really bad, but I got hooked, and it changed my life." She spent the next three years collecting rejection slips before her first manuscript was accepted.

Born in Silver Spring, Maryland, on October 10, 1950, Roberts is the youngest of five children. Her Roman Catholic upbringing plays a role in her first published work, Irish Thoroughbred (1981), and in several later books, including a minor one in Rebellion. Her first marriage ended in divorce, leaving her with two sons, Daniel and Jason.

She remarried...