You have no idea how alone I thought I was in my love of Caldwell. Seemed no one I’d met had ever heard of her or read her. I gave up thinking about it. You’re the second person on Free Republic in the last year who has loved her work as I do. Wow! Just wow!
:-) Over the years, I have met several other freepers who share this love for the works of TC. One question that always plagued many was how she could so clearly depict the periods she described, with such vibrancy. She had a gift to transport the reader back in time - somewhat like that tv program "You are There". How could she have know these minute details about building construction, dress codes, personalities, attitudes? 30 years ago, I came across a book entitled: Search for a Soul - the Psychic Lives of Taylor Caldwell. The author, Jess Stearn, persuaded Ms. Caldwell to submit to hypnosis. (Okay - this was during one of my youthful, away from the Church phases of life when I would read anything that offered an explanation for the inexplicable). TC had often commented that when she wrote, there was a 'presence'. And when the 'presence' was missing, she could not write. According to the information generated by these sessions, Ms. Caldwell would not die until she had written the final book on the life of Christ. I waited and waited and then, the news announcement of her death came. I wondered for months afterwards when someone would discover this "incomplete work", but there were no other manuscripts. Then I met a Franciscan monk who was her confessor. He was not aware of any such work either. Can you imagine how TC would have dealt with our Lord's life!!!
From what I understand, Taylor Caldwell's books are very popular with the home schooling crowd. The book I mentioned, "Dialogues with the Devil" can be found on Amazon.com for a hefty price. For any Taylor Caldwell fan, it is a veritable treasure!
I remember The Listener and have been thinking of it lately. Of course up here in Kanukistan you cannot find religious books (except The God Delusion and God is Not Great, of course). Our library does not have a single solitary book by C.S. Lewis, not even the Narnia books. When I asked them to order A Grief Observed from another library I got the Cliffs Notes! A search by the librarian proved that every copy they used to have in any library was missing.
I went across the street to the bookstore (we have only one chain store in the GTA) and was told that they could not order books by C.S. Lewis. My sister popped into Borders in Florida and picked up a copy for me.
So chances of finding anything by Taylor Caldwell in Kanukistan are slim, unless someone from the States might have donated it to a used bookstore.