You Belong to Me [Hardcover]

Mary Higgins Clak (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster; First edition. edition (1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684821303
• ISBN-13: 978-0684821306
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,386,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

If I were to define myself in one sentence, I would say, "I'm a nice Irish Catholic girl from the Bronx."

I was a Christmas Eve baby all those years ago, the second of the three children of Nora and Luke Higgins. Mother was pushing forty when they married and my father was forty-two. My older brother was named Joseph. Nineteen months later I, Mary, was born. Three and a half years later, my little brother, John, came along.

We lived in a very nice section of the Bronx on a street off Pelham Parkway. I loved our house. I still love it. After my father died, when I was eleven, my mother had to sell it.

I went to Saint Francis Xavier Grammar School. Two years ago I went back and was Principal for a Day. Escorted by two of the tiniest children, I was led into the auditorium while the whole student body sang "Hello Mary. You're back where you belong." I still tear up thinking about it.

I was awarded a scholarship to Villa Maria Academy which is in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx, otherwise I couldn't have afforded to set foot in it.

I went to Woods Secretarial School and at eighteen had my first full-time job as Secretary to the creative director of Remington Rand's in-house advertising agency. If I were making that choice now I would have gone to college even though God knows we needed the income. On the other hand the three years I spent in Remington Rand was a tutorial in advertising which served me well when I was widowed with five small children. Another plus was that I left Remington to be a flight stewardess with Pan American Airways and when my contemporaries were seniors in college, I was flying to Europe, Africa and Asia.

Warren Clark and I were married on December 26, 1949 and had five children in the next eight years; Marilyn, Warren, David, Carol and Patricia. Warren died of a heart attack in 1964. The highest compliment I can pay my kids are that they are like him.

I sold my first short story when I was twenty-eight. It was alled 'Stowaway'. It had been rejected forty times before a magazine in Chicago bought it for one hundred dollars.

My first book was about George Washington. It was published in 1969 and disappeared without a trace. Three years ago Simon and Schuster co-published it with the Mount Vernon Historical Society and retitled 'Mount Vernon Love Story', it became a bestseller.

My first suspense novel 'Where Are the Children' was bought in 1974 for three thousand dollars by Simon and Schuster. Thirty-three books later, I'm still with S&S.

Time to wind up - at least for the present. As soon as I sold 'Children' I enrolled in Fordham College. Went there for five years at night and earned a B.A. in Philosophy. Summa cum laude, if you please.

I never thought I'd marry again but ten years ago I threw a cocktail party on St. Patrick's day. My daughter, Pat, urged me to invite John Conheeney. Her opening words about him were, "Have I got a hunk for you!" He came to the party and we were married eight months later.

I'm Honorary Chairman of FraXa Research. My grandson, David, has the Fragile X syndrome, which is the second leading cause of retardation after Downs Syndrome. Basically the brain of the people who have it can't send out the proper signals because there's a kind of short circuit in the synapses that carry the signals. We raise money for research with the goal of finding a medication that will work around that short circuit. I go all over the country to the fund-raisers as new chapters of FraXa are opened.

I'm always asked to name my favorite book. They're ALL my favorites. If there is one book that is very special to me, it is my memoir 'Kitchen Privileges' because writing it made me relive my early life including those first struggles to become a writer. I think 'Kitchen Privileges' is both tender and funny and it's me.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars You must be kidding...., June 15, 2011

By 

Flute Lady - See all my reviews

This review is from: You Belong to Me (Hardcover)

Are all of her heroines like this? The woman meets a man on a cruise and they quickly become a "couple;" sure, I'll buy that. He gives her a gift - okay, happens all the time. But a RING? And not just a ring, but a ring inscribed "You belong to me" (a bit much even for a couple who know each other a long time - what modern American woman wouldn't find that a bit medieval?) Which, by the way, (if I remember correctly, it's been a while) he happened to bring WITH him on the trip? And it never occurs to this educated, successful woman that maybe there's something a little "off" about this dude? It also seemed to me that half of the murderer's ability to get away with his crimes for so long comes about due to a combination of him being unbelievably lucky (his potential victims invariably talk to this complete stranger way too much, blurting out things that nobody would say to such a casual acquaintance, quickly revealing that they know too much and thereby signing their own death warrants, as well as his constantly managing to find himself alone and/or unobserved with his victims in public places, which is not an easy feat to pull off in New York City) while everyone else is unbelievably dense (an elderly woman, a witness to someone being hit and killed by a car, announces to the TV camera interviewing her that she saw that he didn't fall, he was pushed, but then tells the audience of millions that she's not going to do anything about it just yet because it's her nap time, or other such nonsense - it's been a while since I read this book - and gee whiz, what do you know, the murderer magically manages to get up close to her later on and "silence" her, because she ALSO helpfully told the news crew where she lived! A woman that age who lived in NYC for years and hadn't figured out that whole business about "street smarts?" It's like some sort of evil "deus ex machina" is at work helping this guy. I couldn't stand it. This may have been the first MHC book I read; I think I read one more just to give her a second chance, but once again her female lead was so clueless that before long she was a standard "woman in peril" straight out of a Lifetime movie. I'll never understand why this writer is so popular.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars very good!, June 23, 2003

By 

H. Georges (montréal, canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: You Belong to Me (Hardcover)

It's very good book, like all Mary Higgins Clark's books, there is long intrigue, and it's hard to find the murderer. it's not boring, it's one of Clark's best book.
I very enjoyed it!!