Three of the sisters found they loved the ways of nursing the fourth was unhappy but continued so she could remain with her sisters. When their father, the Reverend Thomas Latimer used his influence on the board of the Corunda Base Hospital to gain all four girls traineeships as nurses, their lives took on different meanings – they lived on-site at the hospital, therefore they were out of Maude’s clutches at last. Maude was oppressive and she made no bones about letting everyone know her favourite child was Kitty, who suffered greatly from that smothering and devoted woman. The fact that their father’s wife Tufts and Kitty’s mother, Maude was a huge influence on their lives was known, but it was not in a good way. The paperback rights sold for an astonishing $1.9 million.Įdda and Grace were the elder twins by twenty months their half-sisters Heather (Tufts) and Kitty formed their tightly-knit group of four – different mothers, the same father they were all destined for different life paths back in the days of 1920s Australia. Though some reviews were scathing, millions of readers worldwide got caught up in her tales of doomed love and other natural calamities. Many of its details were drawn from her mother's family's experience as migrant workers, and one character, Dane, was based on brother Carl. As always, the author proved her toughest critic: 'Actually,' she said, 'it was an icky book, saccharine sweet.'Ī year later, while on a paltry $10,000 annual salary as a Yale researcher, McCullough – just 'Col' to her friends – began work on the sprawling The Thorn Birds, about the lives and loves of three generations of an Australian family.

She finally returned to her craft in 1974 with Tim, a critically acclaimed novel about the romance between a female executive and a younger, mentally disabled gardener. She found jobs first in London and then at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.Īfter her beloved younger brother Carl died in 1965 at age 25 while rescuing two drowning women in the waters off Crete, a shattered McCullough quit writing. Planning become a doctor, she found that she had a violent allergy to hospital soap and turned instead to neurophysiology – the study of the nervous system's functions.

She flourished at Catholic schools and earned a physiology degree from the University of New South Wales in 1963. Raised by her mother in Wellington and then Sydney, McCullough began writing stories at age 5.

Colleen Margaretta McCullough was an Australian author known for her novels, her most well-known being The Thorn Birds and Tim.

Bittersweet by colleen mccullough