Nicholas Charles Sparks was born in Omaha, Nebraska on December 31, 1965, the second son of Patrick Michael and Jill Emma Marie Sparks. As a child, he lived in Minnesota, Los Angeles, and Grand Island, Nebraska, finally settling in Fair Oaks, California at the age of eight. His father was a professor, his mother a homemaker, then optometrist's assistant. He lived in Fair Oaks through high school, graduated valedictorian in 1984, and received a full track scholarship to the University of Notre Dame. After breaking the Notre Dame school record as part of a relay team in 1985 as a freshman (a record which still stands), he was injured and spent the summer recovering. During that summer, he wrote his first novel, though it was never published. He majored in Business Finance and graduated with high honors in 1988.He and his wife Catherine, who met on spring break in 1988, were married in July, 1989. While living in Sacramento, he wrote his second novel that same year, though again, it wasn't published. He worked a variety of jobs over the next three years, including real estate appraisal, waiting tables, selling dental products by phone, and started his own small manufacturing business which struggled from the beginning. In 1990, he collaborated on a book with Billy Mills, the Olympic Gold Medallist and it was published by Feather Publishing before later being picked up by Random House. (It was recently re-issued by Hay House Books.) Though it received scant publicity, sales topped 50,000 copies in the first year of release.He began selling pharmaceuticals and moved from Sacramento, California to North Carolina in 1992. In 1994, at the age of 28, he wrote The Notebook over a period of six months. In October, 1995, rights to The Notebook were sold to Warner Books. It was published in October, 1996, and he followed that with Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember (1999), The Rescue (2000), and A Bend in the Road (2001), all with Warner Books. All were domestic and international best sellers and were translated into more than 35 languages.

He now has five children: Miles, Ryan, Landon, Lexie, and Savannah. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and children. He contributes to a variety of local and national charities, and is a major contributor to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame, where he provides scholarships, internships, and a fellowship annually.

 

Inspiration for The Rescue
by Nicholas Sparks

 

It's taken a while, but I've finally come to the firm understanding that no matter how long I live, I'm never going to have things figured out. My life for instance. If I stand back, chin in hand, and evaluate the things that have occurred in the first 34 years I've been around, I can't help but realize it's been one incredibly unpredictable ride. Up and down, shifting and tilting, suddenly spinning when I least expect it -- at no time have I even had the chance to sit back and enjoy the thing without worrying what may be coming with the next gyration.

It's easy to imagine that everything in my life is wonderful; that I walk down the street as rose petals fall gently from the sky. And I'll admit that I consider myself very fortunate with regard to the success I've achieved in the publishing world. But a big part of the success comes from the stories themselves, and their origins have been anything but easy. I've suffered through the loss of both my parents (my father was the inspiration for Garrett Blake, in Message in a Bottle), I've watched my younger sister struggle bravely with cancer, only to pass away in the end. (She was Jamie Sullivan, in A Walk to Remember.) I watched two wonderful people who taught me what true love was really all about die within months of each other, (Noah and Allie in The Notebook). And I have a son who provided the original inspiration for my latest novel, The Rescue.

My fourth novel was my most challenging novel to date and though I won't go into many details (since I do want you to read the story), I can say that this is a novel that closely parallels my own life over the past four years. All the feelings, all the emotions, all the dreams and fears of Denise Holton (the main female character in The Rescue) are the same as the ones that my wife and I went through at various times; the sacrifice she made for her child was the same one that my wife and I had to make as well. It was a special book to write, and hopefully, you'll find it a special book to read.