[7] Even as a small child, she was interested in writing; she composed her first poem at age seven and often crafted short plays for her friends to enact.

"[9] The family lived off the earnings from their Irish pub and were fairly well-off, owning a home in the Bronx and a summer cottage on Long Island Sound.

[10][11] Although the Great Depression began when Higgins Clark was still a baby, her family was initially not affected and even insisted on feeding the men who knocked on their door looking for work.

[12] By the time Higgins Clark was ten, however, the family began to experience financial trouble, as many of their customers were unable to pay the bar tabs they had run up.

The family was thrown into further turmoil in 1939, when young Mary returned home from an early Mass to discover that her father had died in his sleep.

[5] Nora Higgins, now a widow with three young children to support, soon discovered that few employers were willing to hire a 52-year-old woman who had not held a job in over fourteen years.

[14] Six months after their father's death, Higgins Clark's older brother cut his foot on a piece of metal and contracted severe osteomyelitis.

Higgins Clark and her mother prayed constantly for him, and their neighbors came en masse to give blood for the many transfusions the young boy needed.

When Joseph graduated from high school in 1944, he immediately enlisted in the Navy, both to serve his country during war and to help his mother pay her bills.

[20] Although the family mourned Joseph's death deeply, as his dependent, Nora was guaranteed a life pension and no longer needed her daughter's help to pay the bills.

After completing her coursework the following year, she accepted a job as the secretary to the head of the creative department in the internal advertising division at Remington Rand.

[23] Although she enjoyed her job, Higgins Clark's imagination was sparked by an acquaintance's casual comment, "God, it was beastly hot in Calcutta.

[3] On another of her flights, Higgins Clark escorted a four-year-old orphan down the steps of the airplane into the waiting arms of her adoptive mother, a scene that was heavily televised.

Through the writer's workshop she met an agent, Patricia Schartle Myrer, who represented Higgins Clark for twenty years until her retirement.

[34] In 1959, Warren Clark was diagnosed with severe angina, and, although he curtailed his activities on his doctor's order, he suffered three heart attacks within the next five years, each time returning from the hospital in poorer health.

After the last heart attack in 1964, they felt that Warren would be unable to work again, so Higgins Clark called a friend who wrote scripts for radio shows to see if there were any job openings.

The day that she accepted a job writing the radio segment "Portrait of a Patriot," Warren suffered a fatal heart attack.

[35] Higgins Clark's initial contract to be a radio scriptwriter obligated her to write 65 four-minute programs for the "Portrait of a Patriot" series.

This experience of fitting an entire sketch into four minutes taught Higgins Clark how to write cleanly and succinctly, traits that are incredibly important to a suspense novel, which must advance the plot with every paragraph.

[17] Using her research and experience with the Portraits of a Patriot series, Higgins Clark spent the next three years writing a fictionalized account of the relationship between George and Martha Washington, Aspire to the Heavens.

[19] Although it was sold for only a small advance, its acceptance gave Higgins Clark confidence that she could indeed finish a full-length book and find a publisher.

To provide a good example she entered Fordham University at Lincoln Center in 1971, graduating summa cum laude in 1979, with a BA in philosophy.

[19] During this time Higgins Clark became increasingly frustrated with her employer, and, although two of her children were partially dependent on her for their college tuition, she quit her job and joined two of her former colleagues in forming their own company to write and market radio scripts.

To scrape up the $5000 she needed to start the business, Higgins Clark was forced to pawn her engagement ring, and, for the eight months it took the company to become profitable, she did not receive a salary, further straining the family finances.

Three months later, in July 1974, Higgins Clark received word that the paperback rights for the novel had sold for one hundred thousand dollars.

[43] Higgins Clark's debut novel about George Washington, Aspire to the Heavens was retitled Mount Vernon Love Story and rereleased in 2002, the same year as her autobiography, Kitchen Privileges, which relied heavily on the journals she kept all of her life.

[49] In addition to her residence in Saddle River, Higgins Clark owned homes in Manhattan, Dennis, Massachusetts, and Naples, Florida.

Nora Higgins, on looking at a photo of her eighteen-year-old son in his brand new Navy dress blues told Mary that "He has death in his eyes", and the young man died shortly after.

A psychic that Higgins Clark visited just as her second novel, Where Are the Children, was being published in paperback told her that she would become very famous and make a great deal of money.

Although at the time she laughed off the prediction, the following week her novel reached the bestseller lists and she sold the movie rights shortly after, truly launching her career.