On the path to becoming a novelist, Marie Bostwick worked in the bean fields of Oregon, sang and danced in musical productions, acted in TV commercials, taught religion to deaf children, ran an event-planning business, worked as the scheduler for a U.S. Senator and directed women’s ministries for a large church. But as diverse and enriching as these experiences were, it was a conversation with a stranger that pointed Marie toward her true calling.

With her third book, ON WINGS OF THE MORNING, going into its fourth printing, Marie stopped to tell the story of a day in 1994. Then the mother to three active young sons, Marie went on a much-needed vacation to a resort with some girlfriends. While there, she decided to attend a writer’s workshop, “not from any desire to become a writer,” she said, “but as a way to avoid playing tennis with my friends. I’m hopelessly unathletic.” At the end of the week the instructor approached her, and thinking she was a professional writer, asked what she’d published.

“I just laughed. I told him that I was a mom, and the only thing I wrote was grocery lists.” The instructor insisted that whether Marie knew it or not, she was a writer. Marie thanked him for the compliment, saying she wasn’t a writer, just someone who hadn’t fired her imaginary friends when she grew up. “Then he leaned toward me and said, ‘Well, what do you think writers are?’ That got my attention. I think I realized then that he was onto something, that my secret identity had finally been unmasked.”

The signs were there from an early age. A voracious reader by the age of three, Marie said one of her first literary endeavors was a screenplay she wrote for “Camelot” before she was old enough to attend public school. The musical was a favorite of Marie’s, and, not having seen the movie, she wrote her own story to go with the music she’d heard on her grandmother’s record player. In high school, Marie wrote short stories and “a lot of sad, self-absorbed teenage poetry,” which earned her the school English award.

Marie’s eclectic reading provides endless inspiration for her stories. Her first two books, FIELDS OF GOLD and RIVER’S EDGE, are set in the years surrounding World War II. Though she received frequent letters from readers asking for a sequel to FIELDS OF GOLD, Marie wasn’t sure if she should write another book set in that period. Then she picked up a book about the Women Air Force Service Pilots, the WASP, who flew thousands of non-combat missions during World War II, and knew she had to write about them.

As Marie learned about the history of the WASP, the story of Georgia June Carter, the heroine of ON WINGS OF THE MORNING, became clear in her mind. Library Journal published a Q & A with Marie and a review of the November 2008 book. The same month her first contemporary story, “A High Kicking Christmas,” appeared in COMFORT AND JOY, a Christmas anthology with Fern Michaels.

Born in Eugene, Oregon, the youngest of four sisters experienced a life of comfort in her early years, then financial hardships after her parents’ divorce. But childhood summers spent working in the fields taught her industry and the dignity of good, hard work. They also provided the insight into the hearts and minds of small communities, the settings for her novels.

Marie dedicated four years to writing FIELDS OF GOLD. Published in 2005 by Kensington Books, FIELDS OF GOLD was a finalist for the prestigious Oklahoma Book Award and for RT BOOKclub magazine’s Best Historical Saga Award. RIVER’S EDGE won the Golden Quill Award, was a finalist for a National Readers’ Choice Award and was an alternate selection of the Literary Guild.

Marie enjoys volunteering to help others. When she was twenty-five, she became the first president of a new chapter of Habitat for Humanity in Georgia. Living in Colorado in her early thirties, she managed Promise Keepers seminars designed to train ministers to better understand the needs of men in their congregations. Then, in Mexico, she was the volunteer director of development for Manos de Ayuda (Helping Hands), a medical mission to the poor.

“It feels like the rest of my life and experiences were the lessons that I had to master so I could do this thing I was truly meant to do,” Marie said, adding, “I can’t imagine being anything but a writer.”

A THREAD OF TRUTH (June 2009) finds the Cobbled Court quilters, introduced November 2008 in A SINGLE THREAD, rallying to help an abused woman and her young children. A THREAD OF TRUTH deals with the serious issue of domestic abuse in a positive, uplifting, hopeful manner. It helps to remind us all that accepting help from people who care can make it possible for anyone, no matter how bleak their situation may look, to triumph over adversity. The latest in the series is May 2010’s A THREAD SO THIN, which addresses the struggle a young woman makes between marriage and career and the downstream impact of her decisions.

Today Marie lives in Connecticut with Brad, her husband of twenty-eight years, and their one son still in high school. When not writing or volunteering for her church, she enjoys quilting, watching movies and sipping tea on the front porch with her friends and spending time with her family. She will be a featured speaker at the Paducah Quilt Festival in April 2010.