Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, born in Dallas, Texas in 1938, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and received her Bachelor's degree from Hollins College in 1960. In the same year she married Oliver Hailey, a playwright and the father of her daughters, Elizabeth Kendall and Melinda Brooke. She worked briefly in journalism and publishing before joining her husband in writing for film and television. They served as creative consultants for the enormously popular television series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

Hailey's first novel, A Woman of Independent Means, written in 1978, was an instant bestseller, and her adaptation of this work for the stage won the Los Angeles Critics Award. In 1995, NBC aired A Woman of Independent Means as a six-hour miniseries starring Sally Field, and in this medium, too, the work won critical acclaim. In addition to A Woman of Independent Means, Hailey has written three other novels: Life Sentences in 1982, Joanna's Husband and David's Wife in 1986, and Home Free in 1991. All of these novels have been praised for their commitment to searching out the subtler truths of interpersonal relationships and personal integrity.

Books by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

A Woman of Independent Means

by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey