'Icy Sparks' to Sparkle
by Daisy Maryles -- Publishers Weekly, 3/12/2001
Who is Gwyn Hyman Rubio? Before last Thursday (March 8), few people in the publishing industry, let alone the rest of the United States, would have been able to answer that question. Now that she's the latest Oprah Book Club pick, her fame and fortune are guaranteed. Rubio's debut fiction, Icy Sparks, was published by Viking back in 1998, to good reviews. PW noted that the novel was "remarkable for its often funny portrayal of a child's fears, loves and struggles with an affliction she doesn't know isn't her fault." The book centers on an orphaned girl growing up in a small Kentucky town in the 1950s. At 10, she develops Tourette's Syndrome, which remains undiagnosed until adulthood. Pre-Oprah, the Penguin paperback (published in 1999) went to press twice, for a total of about 11,100 copies. Anticipating sales way beyond that modest figure, Penguin's first printing for the Oprah edition is 850,000. Oprah's previous two club picks—We Were the Mulvaneys and The House of Sand and Fog —are both still riding high on the national bestseller charts. Her 38 fiction selections all have impressive track records—almost all enjoyed double-digit tenures on the weekly bestseller charts and went on to sell upward of 750,000 copies each. Since we now all know who Gwyn Hyman Rubio is, here's another question: Who is her father? That would be Mac Hyman, author of the 1940 bestselling novel No Time for Sergeants, later made into a famous movie starring Andy Griffith.
