The Oprah Effect

Off the Shelf  By Tawni O'Dell    |   Wednesday, September 03, 2014 Tawni O’Dell is the New York Times bestselling author of five novels including Back Roads, which was an Oprah’s Book Club pick and a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection. Back Roads is currently in development to be made into a film by Michael Ohoven, the producer of the Academy-Award-winning, Capote.  Her works have been published in over 40 countries.  Tawni was born and raised in the coal-mining region of western  Pennsylvania, the territory she writes about with such striking authenticity. She graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism and spent many years living in the Chicago area before moving back to Pennsylvania with her two children.  Her fifth novel, One Of Us, was published in August 2014. I was in my kitchen making dinner while mediating an argument between my children about who the dog liked best when I got the call from Oprah. I almost didn’t answer the phone and I’ve often wondered since if she would have left a message or just moved down her list to the next author she loved. Did Oprah leave messages? What motivated me to reach for the phone was the knowledge that I was no longer just a thirtysomething mother of two and a half-hearted freelance journalist who had accumulated so many identically worded, infuriatingly vague rejection letters for my novels over the years that I had decided my epitaph should read, “Here lies Tawni O’Dell. Just not right for us.” My first novel had been published a month earlier to rave reviews. I had an agent, an editor, and a publicist; any one of whom might be calling me now. I answered the phone. “Is this Tawni O’Dell?” a female voice inquired. I confirmed that it was. “Hi, Tawni. This is Oprah Winfrey.” “Yeah, right.” I laughed. “This is Oprah Winfrey,” she repeated. “. READ FULL POST