Janet Dailey was an American romance novelist and one of the best-selling authors of her generation. Born in Storm Lake, Iowa, in 1944, she became the first American woman to be published by Mills & Boon and went on to write well over a hundred books, translated into nineteen languages and selling more than 300 million copies. Her Americana series placed a novel in every US state, while the Calder saga followed a Montana ranching dynasty across eleven volumes. Aspen Gold, published in 1991 and set in the Colorado ski town, belongs to her later single-title period.
Dailey died in December 2013 in Branson, Missouri. Her Western settings and independent heroines helped reshape the romance genre for American readers.
Photo: Associated Press (1981), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.