That Other Passion

By Michele Orecklin

If you, dear reader, enjoy romance novels but prefer bodice lacers to bodice rippers, Karen Kingsbury appreciates your restraint. In the author's latest book, Beyond Tuesday Morning (Zondervan; 316 pages), 9/11 widow Jamie Bryan resists a potential suitor because he fails to share her faith in God. When Jamie later dates a fellow believer, the courtship is passionate but chaste. As in all of Kingsbury's novels, there is no gratuitous violence or swearing, and sex, while never explicitly depicted, comes only after marriage.

A self-described "Bible-believing, conservative Christian," Kingsbury has written 22 novels, seven currently on the Christian best-seller list. She has more than 2 million books in print. With her popularity and prolific output, she is developing into the Nora Roberts of the religious set. That has not escaped the notice of mainstream publishers, many of which are trying to cash in on the ever burgeoning religious market. Last summer she was signed by Center Street, a new imprint of Time Warner Book Group (like TIME, a division of Time Inc.), which the company says will release "wholesome" books targeted at "America's heartland." A Thousand Tomorrows, her first book for her new publishers, is due out next month.

A vivacious blond, Kingsbury, 41, lives in Vancouver, Wash., with her husband Donald and their six children. She says she always wanted to write and once imagined being "the next Danielle Steel." But, wouldn't you know, love intervened. Raised Catholic, Kingsbury became born again in her 20s after she met Donald. So when she wrote her first novel, in 1997, it took on a decidedly Christian cast.

Although secular, nothing in Tomorrows is likely to offend Kingsbury's regular readers. The story of a male bull rider and a female rodeo rider bears the hallmarks of all Kingsbury's narratives: sympathetic characters facing overwhelming obstacles. "When I first wrote it, [Center Street] called and said, 'We need 80% of the Christian content to come out of it,'" recalls Kingsbury. "Because it's about love, I was O.K. with that. It's really about love that doesn't fail, and that's a I Corinthians 13 message." A message that can be embraced by devotees of the Bible or romance novels. --By Michele Orecklin. Reported by Andrea Sachs/New York

With reporting by Andrea Sachs/New York