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Avon's editors believe the question echoes a cry from the hearts of millions of American wives and mothers. These women, says an Avon executive, are sick of being used as domestic drudges and emotional garbage bags. "They identify with Rosemary's heroines because the heroines do everything the average housewife longs to do — they travel to exotic places, meet famous people, have passionate affairs with fascinating men, and in the end fall madly in love and live happily ever after." Identification is made easy because Rogers' heroines — and her heroes for that matter — are at worst stick figures to hang costumes and projections on, at best somewhat friskier avatars of poor sat-upon Jane Eyre and surly Rochester.
But even a reader who cannot identify with the author's rude stereotypes is likely to feel the urgent excitement of these books. Author Rogers possesses theatrical flair and truly grand vulgarity. Her books are built, like action movies, from a rapid series of short, vivid scenes. Readers who do keep reading have no time to pause and reflect on the preposterousness of what is happening. Seized by the throat, the poor geese are force-fed events events events as the action mounts to a terrific climax in which lust sprouts little pink wings and Beauty fetters Beast with a golden wedding band . Brad Darrach —
"My heroines are me," says Rosemary Rogers. With her big dark eyes, full red lips, mass of raven hair and Las Vegas body, she looks the part — and she has lived some of it. The oldest child of a wealthy educator who owned three posh private schools in Ceylon, Rosemary Jansz was raised in colonial splendor: dozens of servants — never did a lick of work — summers at European spas — impossible to go anywhere without a chaperone. A dreamy child, she wrote her first novel at eight, and all through her teens scribbled madly romantic epics in imitation of her favorite writers: Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas and Rafael Sabatini.
At 17, initiating the pattern her heroines now follow, Rosemary rebelled against a feudal upbringing. After three years at the University of Ceylon, she horrified her family by taking a job as a reporter. Two years later she married a Ceylonese track star known as "the fastest man in Asia." Unhappily, says Rosemary, he often sprinted after other women. At 28, she packed up her two daughters and took off for London, there to try the flamboyant high-and-low life her heroines always have a fling at. One day a middle-aged multimillionaire offered her a fancy flat in Paris and a huge allowance, but Rosemary had already fallen for a black G.I. named Leroy Rogers. "He was the first man," she recalls, "who made me feel like a real woman."
After getting a divorce from the track star, she married Rogers in his home town, St. Louis. Six years later, when that marriage broke up ("It turned out we had only one interest in common," she explains), Rosemary was left with two sons and two daughters to support on her $4,200 salary as a typist. In 1969, in the face of a socialist takeover of Ceylon, her parents fled the island with only £ 100, giving Rosemary two more dependents. At 37, the rich girl from Ceylon was on her uppers in Fairfield.