An Unlikely MHC Hit
by Daisy Maryles -- Publishers Weekly, 7/1/2002
Back in the late '60s, while scriptwriting for the radio show Portrait of a Patriot, Mary Higgins Clark learned that George Washington was a far different man than the pious legend. She was intrigued, and made the love story of George and Martha the topic of her first book, Aspire to the Heavens. Published in 1969, it received little attention and had minimal sales. Things are a lot different now for the bestselling author, and when a descendent of George Washington, who is a member of the Mount Vernon Society, learned that Aspire existed, it took just two phone calls (the Society to Clark and Clark to her publisher Simon & Schuster) for the book to be republished. The book was renamed Mount Vernon Love Story and this time, it's getting lots of attention and sales. There are currently 410,000 copies in print.
