Ruth, a Portrait

Best-selling mystery author Patricia Cornwell grew up in western North Carolina, two miles down the road from evangelist Billy Graham and his spirited wife, Ruth Bell Graham. It was Ruth who gave Cornwell her earliest encouragement to write. She returned the favor in 1983 with her first effort at a Ruth Graham biography, A Time for Remembering. Now out of print, her first book caused an eight-year breach in her relationship with Graham, during which she put aside biography for mystery writing with Postmortem, the first novel to win the Edgar, Creasy, Anthony, and Macavity awards, as well as the French Prix du Roman d'Adventurei, in a single year. Now Cornwell returns to the subject of her first book with Ruth, A Portrait, an air-brushed rendering that owes more to hagiography than biography. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.