Happy Accident

When Gabrielle Roy's novel Bonheur d'Occasion (Accidental Happiness) was published two years ago, Canadian critics called it the best book yet written about French Canadian working-class life. In less than a year it sold some 8,000 copies. That achievement made it a Canadian bestseller.

Miss Roy, a comely Manitoba-born French Canadian who had also tried her hand at schoolmarming and amateur acting, was well-pleased with her success--and her $3,000 in royalties. But she went right on working in her home at rustic little Rawdon (pop. 2,000) in Quebec's Laurentian mountains. Then a happy chance, of the kind she had written about, befell her too.

Mrs. Miriam Chapin, sister of Curtice Hitchcock, New York publisher, came across Bonheur in Montreal. When she had read Author Roy's story of life in St. Henri, a smoky slum section of Montreal, she mailed a copy to her brother. Reynal & Hitchcock agreed to publish it. They changed the title to The Tin Flute, and had the book translated into English. Then New York's Literary Guild, whose million members make it the largest book club in the world, read the manuscript. It announced that The Tin Flute will be its May selection, the first work of a French Canadian to be chosen. The Guild's first printing of 625,000 copies will yield author and publishers $93,000 to be split 50-50. Reynal & Hitchcock have increased their own first edition to 50,000 copies, which will net the author another $20,000. (The French edition, now moving at a 1,000-a-month clip, has already sold around 14,000 copies.)

Universal Pictures, Inc. has paid $50,000 for the screen rights, plus another $25,000 when shooting starts. Last week French, German, Swiss, Swedish, Portuguese and other publishers were dickering energetically for translation rights. Bonheur was setting an earnings mark that no other French Canadian book had ever approached.

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