Rebecca Brown Burton

Rebecca Brown was born on February 14, 1940 in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is the daughter of Dr. John Zimmerman Brown, Jr. and Kathryn Ormsby Hyde.When she was 17, she went to boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland, whereshe learned to speak French and met girls from all over the world. Uponreturning to the U.S., Rebecca developed her love of languages when sheearned her B.A. in secondary education, history, French, and Spanish fromthe University of Utah and did postgraduate work in Arabic.

Because of her studies overseas, Rebecca decided to become a teacher andstudied French and history at her alma mater in Utah. For the past 15 years,she's taught junior-high and high-school French and history, and says shegot into serious writing almost by accident.

"I went through a back door to begin my writing career," she says. "In thefirst place, I never liked to write anything -- I only wrote mandatory papersfor school. If anyone had told me I would become a writer, let alone loveit, I would have laughed and dismissed the notion as absolutely absurd andpreposterous. Having said that, I did write letters to my parents while Iwas away at boarding school when I was 17. My mother kept them and one day,after I had become a mother for the second time, she sent me all my oldletters and asked me to write my memories from them for posterity. At thetime I thought she was insane, but because I adore my mother I did as sheasked. By the time I'd finished sorting through all those teenage thoughts,observations and opinions, the seeds of a story had begun to form in mymind. The seed eventually became a novel and was published in 1979. It wascalled The Loving Season, published under the name Rebecca Burton.Naturally, it takes place in Switzerland and France. As soon as I finishedthat novel, I found myself wanting to start another novel entitled By LoveDivided, a World War II romance. A few years later, Harlequin bought anovel, Blind to Love, a story that takes place in Kenya. It's been a loveaffair ever since. I guess the moral of the story is, never underestimate amother's intuition!"

Europe is her favourite locale for her novels. She lived in France andSwitzerland, and has travelled extensively all over Europe, particularlySpain, Italy, the Pyrenees and Sweden. She said "There are so many gorgeousplaces, fascinating people, beautiful languages, culture and history, it'slike trying to choose from a fabulous smorgasboard every time I start towrite a new story. The tastes, smells, sights, music--all of it speaks to me.Every time!"

As Rebecca has kept writing, her talents have not gone unrecognized. She haswon the National Readers' Choice Award, the Romantic Times Reviewers' ChoiceAward, and has been named Utah Writer of the Year. Right now, Rebecca isworking her way toward her 50th novel for Harlequin.

Rebecca, is a mother of four, Wilford, John,Dominique Jessop and Maxim. They live in Salt Lake City, Utah.