A 'True and Outstanding' Epistolary Tale Is a Book Sense Bestseller

"She's somewhat of a mistake that really worked," said Elisabeth Robinson, referring to Olivia Hunt, the rambunctious and loveable protagonist of her first novel, The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters (Little, Brown), a January/February Book Sense 76 Top Ten pick and a Book Sense bestseller. Olivia is a Hollywood producer who has been fired, yet doesn't completely know why. She's also been dumped by her boyfriend, yet is still in love with him. Then suddenly, she learns that her pregnant sister, Maddie, has been stricken with leukemia.

Robinson intended to create a cynical and bitter main character that would get juxtaposed against Maddie, who often maintains remarkable optimism and idealism despite her painful battle with cancer. But Olivia turned out differently. "She's trying to be cynical, and she really can't be, which is part of what redeems her," Robinson told BTW in a recent interview. "She's trying to be this tough guy and can't quite pull it off."

But Olivia certainly tries hard: Midway into the story, she a steals her former boss' dream car. "One minute I was in my Karmen Ghia pounding the steering wheel because it refused to start (again), and the next I was sitting in the cool leather comfort of your, may I say, outstanding automobile, the Silver Rolls-Royce Shadow," Olivia writes in a wildly funny letter to the boss himself.

Robinson's entire work is presented through Olivia's letters, which include snail mail, e-mail, and faxes.

Olivia's tough facade really shows itself when she writes to a hospital director: "What is with you people? I've never encountered such a bunch of self-impressed, ignorant idiots under one roof -- and I've worked in Hollywood."

To some extent, Olivia's experiences parallel Robinson's life. Olivia eventually gets a chance to produce her own dream-film, Don Quixote; Robinson is a Hollywood producer, screenwriter, and former studio executive who produced Last Order, starring Michael Cain. She also was associate producer on Braveheart and was executive producer on Simply Irresistible and The Man Who Knew Too Little, starring Bill Murray. Unlike her protagonist, however, Robinson has had "great" bosses.

"I was actually really lucky in Hollywood," she explained. "I observed things at work, and read about things that happened, but didn't suffer what Olivia suffered. If I had to use my own experiences, it would have been really dull. I've never been fired, for example. But beginning the book with a character who has been fired and doesn't know why she's been fired, and is a little bit arrogant, you just can't wait to watch her rise from the ashes or get kicked around a bit more."

Robinson is even more similar to Olivia in another way. "My sister suffered a medical tragedy very similar to Maddie's," she said. It's a big reason why the medical information Robinson presents is so well researched. "I did a lot of research about leukemia when my sister was diagnosed. I wanted to be as informed as possible."

When Robinson's friends in book publishing discovered that she had taken a year off to write a novel that would be in epistolary form, "their faces would all fall," the author admitted. "'Oh Elisabeth, epistolary is unsellable,' the first agent I gave this book to said. 'I don't even look at these because I can't sell them.'"

But perhaps Robinson is even more like her protagonist than she cares to admit: "I didn't want to be messed with," she said. "And after Hollywood, where there's so many chefs in the kitchen, I thought, You know what, I'm going to do this. And I thought that at the very least, I would have a tribute to my sister."

Another draw for Robinson was that she wasn't writing for a director or a studio, but for herself and a new audience. And capturing her sister's fight with leukemia helped the author understand how to live with courage, she pointed out.

"At first I was inspired by [my sister's] optimism, and when she died, I was really haunted," Robinson said. "I ultimately knew, however, that she hadn't really lived in a bitter place. And wouldn't have wanted me to, either."

Robinson's success on an epistolary canvas is hardly surprising, considering she's always been an avid letter writer and journal scribe. "I've always written through things in my life," she said. "This project healed me, in a way. And I just found out that it actually healed my dad.

"As a writer, you worry about how people are going to respond to things you write, and you want them to approve of what you do. And when he said during Christmas that it really helped him, I felt like everything else was gravy! He was shattered by what happened to my sister. He's coming back alive now. He felt that I captured my sister's spirit and that she was saying to him, 'You've got to live, and I don't want to be a source of sadness.'… He's such a great guy, and I'm so happy the book had an impact on him."

Olivia's letters sometimes incorporate dialogue she has with other people, and herself, making them especially intriguing and dynamic. In a letter to her best friend, Tina, she talks about the affair she's considering having with someone she's working with on the Don Quixote project. Olivia writes, "I think I'm going to do it, Tina. Don't. Why not? Wait till the movie's over." Weaving in dialogue also made sense considering Olivia's profession. "She's a film executive and her world is storytelling, so it seemed natural to me that's she'd want to tell the story with dialogue."

As a screenwriter, Robinson herself has always thought in terms of scenes and structure. "I'd say to myself, 'I need a scene where this or that happens and make a list, and there's 10 scenes right there.' Letters have a similar modularity. This modularity made the novel manageable."

Robinson's own experiences in Hollywood helped turn The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters into a captivating read. While working on Don Quixote, Olivia writes to many stars, including Danny DeVito and Robin Williams, and the way she corresponds with them is humorous and revealing. Indeed, the novel casts a spotlight on the way things work in Hollywood, which Olivia calls "a tiny" world. "Oh yeah, it's unbelievably small," Robinson stressed. "There's probably a few hundred people, and that's not many, kind of in the center of things."

At the center of Robinson's uplifting novel is its star, Olivia Hunt -- a character whose voice is unforgettable. "The most seductive thing about the novel form was finding Olivia's voice," Robinson said. "And as a writer, you know that that feels really good -- it's magic when it happens. When I found her voice, I didn't want to stop." --Jeff Perlah