[3] Before breaking into publishing, Belva Plain wrote short stories for magazines while raising her three children.
She sold her first story to Cosmopolitan at age 25 and "contributed several dozen to various women's magazines until she had three children in rapid succession.
[4] Evergreen followed the character Anna, "a feisty, redheaded Jewish immigrant girl from Poland in turn-of-the-century New York, whose family story continues through several decades and four more books.".
[1] The New York Times summed up her career Strong-willed women, many of them Jewish and red-haired as well, appear again and again in Ms. Plain’s fiction.
Other books tell stories about contemporary issues, sometimes inspired by the headlines — divorce (“Promises”), adoption (“Blessings”), child sexual abuse (“The Carousel”) or babies accidentally switched at birth (“Daybreak”).