At just 19 years old, Danielle Steel (New York, 1947) had her first daughter, Beatrix, and completed her first novel, ‘Return Home’, about a divorced stylist who takes refuge in her hometown, New York, after discovering almost at the same time that her new love has made her pregnant and that she lies with another in her own bed. Eight children and almost 200 books latertranslated to 43 languages, 22 times taken to the cinema, there’s no denying that Steel is one of the most prolific people to ever populate the Earth. This week his latest title, ‘Buscando a Ashley’, has arrived in Spanish bookstores.
The author has just reached one billion copies sold worldwide, four million copies in Spanish alone, according to its editorial Plaza&Janés. Even Steel herself thinks it’s a lot, she confesses on her blog in light of her 75th birthday; She achieves this by working on up to five books at the same time and publishing an average of six a year. He doesn’t sleep, of course.: four hours a night is enough. She often brags about waking up, having fallen asleep, with the keys of her old typewriter. Olympia engraved on the forehead – he bought it for twenty dollars at the beginning of his career and has paid it off more than enough, he likes to joke – and of playing in the same league of illustrious insomniacs as Napoleon, Margaret Thatcher and Barack Obama.
“I thought I had married a woman and I realized that I had married a plot,” he would have said about her John Traina, the fourth of her five husbands. Only child of a German father, descendant of the owners of Lowenbrau beer, and of a Portuguese mother, Danielle Steel grew up in Paris from the age of six. From there she drew from her her command of French – she has even received the Legion of Honor – and not a little inspiration on social events to dress her novels.
After the divorce of her first husband, the French banker Claude-Eric Lazard, whom she married when she was just 18, the writer seemed to want to become one of her characters: her wealthy life was implausibly complicated by falling in love with the wrong man. In order to distract himself after her breakup with Lazard, She volunteered in prison, where she met her second husband, convicted bank robbery and sexual assault officer Danny Zugelder., whom he married in the prison chapel. They were together for four years and after the divorce she married ex-heroin addict convicted of robbery William George Toth, shortly before giving birth to a son, Nick. “I am probably the most conservative person you will ever meet. I am very religious,” she opened up to Entertainment Weekly. “I’ve been like this all my life, which is why I married those two morons instead of just sleeping with them,” she added.
Already in the eighties, free again, he met the winegrower John Traina, that like her he had two children, his most lasting love. After he divorced her, they met for lunch on New Year’s in 1981, he proposed to her on Valentine’s Day and on June 14 of that same year they were already married. Traina legally adopted her son Nick, together they had another five children, up to a total of nine between them. They were 17 happy years in which they formed a great family, not exempt from shadows: together they faced Nick’s suicide, suffering from bipolar disorder, aged just 19, in 1997. To him Steel dedicated his most precious book, ‘His Inner Light’, and created a foundation in his honor to help other mentally ill people. The marriage foundered a year later and it was around that time that Danielle Steel suffered the only creative block he’s had in his life: 14 months without pounding his Olympiain which he feared that he would never be able to write again.
Losing another child is his greatest fear, he has confessed; her greatest regret, “having been married more than once.” There was still a fifth husband, Silicon Valley financier Tom Perkins, with whom he was four years. Neither her eventful love life nor her role as the mother of a large family ever distracted Danielle Steel from writing.
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“Mainly, what I have done in my life is raise children and write. I have always been a working mother, which is sometimes an incredible juggling act, especially with many children. To this day, the writer leads a dream life, halfway between her houses in San Francisco and Paris, where she is dropped in haute couture shows, her most lasting passion of hers with permission from literature romantic. She owns a fabulous wardrobe where the big brands prevail-her favorite maison is Chanel- and 6,000 pairs of Louboutin shoeshas instilled a love for fashion in three of his daughters, Samantha, Victoria and Vanessa, who is a professional fashion consultant.
On his way to turning eighty, Steel continues with his literary Stakhanovism, with no more secrets than not trying alcohol or vegetables. “I have always said that the only green thing I like are emeralds”, he joked. At this point, she only hopes to die in peace, in good physical health, active and surrounded by his children, as she confesses. Of late, she’s had to say goodbye to her agent, Mort Janklow, and her dear friend, journalist Barbara Walters, who bet on her giving her notoriety when she was an unknown debutante. Whatever the outcome, Danielle Steel’s life has been as eventful as her romantic plots.
