It’s the birthday of Alice Sebold (b. 1963), whose novel The Lovely Bones (2002) has sold about 10 million copies and has been called “the most successful debut novel since Gone with the Wind.”

Sebold was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where her father taught Spanish at the University of Pennsylvania. Her family was highly academic but Sebold resisted their expectations, wanting to be different. She also wanted to be a writer.

Sebold ended up at Syracuse University, where one night during her freshman year she was brutally raped in a tunnel. Sebold went home for the summer (where her family’s response to her rape was tone deaf) and then returned to Syracuse in the fall, studying creative writing with Raymond Carver and Tess Gallagher. She also identified her rapist and testified against him in court; he was convicted and sent to prison.

After a difficult decade of drifting and dabbling in heroin, Sebold began to write about the rape. She began the novel that became The Lovely Bones (first called Monsters), broke off to write a memoir called Lucky (1999), and then finished the novel, which is written from the point of view of a 14 year old girl in heaven who was raped and killed. After The Lovely Bones became a huge success, Lucky began to sell as well. Sebold’s second novel, The Almost Moon, was published in 2007 and also explores the realm of violence and terror; it opens with the line, “When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.” All three books are now bestsellers.

Sebold, who earned an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, lives in San Francisco.

Have a lovely Friday in spite of any ridiculously early school bus schedules your family might be struggling to adjust to and stay scrupulously honest to the data.