Article: A Bend in the Road...

A Bend in the Road was a challenging story to conceive and a difficult story to write, though in all honesty, the reasons had more to do with events in my own life than the process of putting the words down on paper. Originally, I'd intended to start my writing my new novel in January, 2000 but there were two major events that made work of any kind difficult.

First, my third son was born on January 11th; within days of that event, I learned that my younger sister, who'd been battling cancer for years, had just been given a few months to live. I live in North Carolina and my sister lives in California and I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could; I also wanted to bond with my new child and the push and pull, the wonder of life and tragedy of death, made concentration of any kind difficult. Every ninth day, I flew to California to stay with my sister for four days, and those trips continued through the end of May when she finally passed away. My sister, for those who don't know, was the inspiration for Jamie Sullivan in A Walk to Remember, and she was not only a sibling, but along with my wife and brother, my best friend as well. Her loss, along with the death of both my parents, were without a doubt the most difficult things I've been through.

Despite the travel, despite the stress and lack of sleep due to the new baby, I nonetheless did try to write. I wrote half a novel in those six months, though I realized that the story simply wasn't working. My deadline was in January which gave me six months to write an entirely new story, and my editor came down to help me conceive of something that might work.

Knowing that all of my novels have come from family events, my editor suggested we start there and because my brother-in-law was on my mind, the first character became a young widower who had to raise a child on his own. This was Miles Ryan, and from there, I was able to pin down a plot that I thought might work. The end result is A Bend in the Road, and in many ways, I think it's my best novel to date. It's both poignant and suspenseful, and I hope that those who read it will find it a story that moves them.

Nicholas Sparks
September 2001