The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff ~ a Review.The incomplete manuscript Leaving Cold Sassy, along with her notes, was published posthumously. She was still working on the sequel when she died on July 4, 1990. The book was well received by readers and many wrote to Burns asking for a sequel. It took her more than 8 years to write Cold Sassy Tree, which was published in 1984 by Boston publisher Ticknor & Fields (who eventually became Houghton, Mifflin and Company). She drew from these stories when writing Cold Sassy Tree. After her mother's death, Burns relied on her father for these recollections. She had always had an interest in family history and had been recording family stories from her mother, who died from cancer in 1972. Though always a writer, fiction was not a direction she thought she would ever take. This diagnosis prompted her to write a novel. She wrote an advice column for The Atlanta Journal Magazine as Amy Larkin until 1967.Ĭold Sassy Tree is her only completed novel. From these modest beginnings, Burn went onto college and then a career with The Atlanta Journal. They moved to Commerce, Georgia when Burns was about 8 years old.

Her family farmed but during The Great Depression, they had to sell the farm. Olive Ann Burns was born on Jin Banks County, Georgia. I read this book some 25 years ago.Īmazon affiliate links are used on this site. Since I've been reading through a pile of local author books, I thought I would look closer at what was possibly the first local author book I ever read: Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns.

A cold sassy tree