The Books

Published: 2003
ISBN-13: 0446527793
Publisher: Warner Books
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Surprising…hair-raising….Thanks to the spiced-up suspenseful new recipe, readers wi  ......View All Reviews

The Guardian

Description

Julie Barenson’s young husband left her two unexpected gifts before he died – a puppy named Singer and the promise that he would always be watching over her. Now, four years later, twenty-nine year-old Julie is far too young to have given up on love. She may be ready to risk caring for someone again. But who? Should it be Richard Franklin, the sophisticated, handsome engineer who treats her like a queen? Or Mike Harris, the down-to-earth nice guy who was her husband’s best friend? Choosing one of them should bring her more happiness than she’s had in years. Instead, Julie is soon fighting for her life in a nightmare spawned by a chilling deception and jealousy so poisonous that it has become a murderous desire . . . The Guardian contains all the qualities readers expect from Nicholas Sparks. But here, he adds a new electrifying intensity – and page after page of riveting suspense.

Did You Know

The Guardian was the first of Nicholas's novels that is not inspired by true events?

Julie Barenson and Officer Jennifer Romanello got their names from two people on Nicholas's publishing team?

The Guardian required extensive revisions (and the publication of another book entirely -- Nights in Rodanthe), and then went on to spend five months on the bestseller list?

Description

Julie Barenson’s young husband left her two unexpected gifts before he died – a puppy named Singer and the promise that he would always be watching over her. Now, four years later, twenty-nine year-old Julie is far too young to have given up on love. She may be ready to risk caring for someone again. But who? Should it be Richard Franklin, the sophisticated, handsome engineer who treats her like a queen? Or Mike Harris, the down-to-earth nice guy who was her husband’s best friend? Choosing one of them should bring her more happiness than she’s had in years. Instead, Julie is soon fighting for her life in a nightmare spawned by a chilling deception and jealousy so poisonous that it has become a murderous desire . . . The Guardian contains all the qualities readers expect from Nicholas Sparks. But here, he adds a new electrifying intensity – and page after page of riveting suspense.

Film/TV Sales

Rights to this novel have not been sold.

Background Info

For a long time, I’d wanted to write a love story that incorporated both love and danger. I suppose it’s partly due to the fact that I enjoy novels that keep me on the edge of my seat.

Growing up, I enjoyed the works of many authors, and had read a variety of the classics while still in high school. While it would be wonderful to claim that I enjoyed everything about such novels as The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe or Moby Dick by Herman Melville, I must admit that I didn’t. Perhaps it was age related, but I found myself able to put those books (and others like them) aside for days before eventually picking them up again. I’d initially begun to read them because my mom had recommended them to me; strangely, it took me a long time to notice that when my mom settled in to read for the night, she often chose modern story-tellers such as James Herriot, Dick Francis, and Agatha Christie.

Sometime around the age of 15, my dad recommended that I try a novel by Stephen King, and from the moment I opened the cover, I couldn’t put it down. It was The Stand -- destined to be a classic in the horror genre, I believe -- and the ever-mounting tension compelled me to read long after I should have gone to sleep.

This dramatic tension associated with fright was something I wanted to create in my own novel, not only because of my own preferences, but as a way to keep this particular novel fresh and original for my readers. Yet, creating fright and tension wasn’t as much of a change in the style of my novels as most people might assume, even though I’m most known for writing love stories. Throughout my career, I’ve varied the theme in each of my novels, which is the reason, for instance, The Notebook is hard to compare to A Bend in the Road. After all, the theme influences everything in the novels – characters, settings, structure, length, and voice of the narrator– and by changing themes, it’s my hope that the reader never knows exactly what to expect. In the past, I’ve written about everlasting love, love after loss, first love, love as rescue, love and forgiveness, love and sacrifice and for The Guardian, I simply chose to write about love and danger. In other words, I wanted to write a story in which two believable characters fell in love, but I wanted to add elements of suspense that would ultimately put both characters in jeopardy.

The Guardian, unlike my previous novels, is a story completely derived from my imagination, yet the conception of the story wasn’t necessarily more difficult than it has been in the past. Once I’d decided on the theme – love and danger – it was simply a matter of getting the right elements into the novel. The first, and most obvious question dealt with the cause of the danger. My choices were simple – it could either be a dangerous place, a dangerous event, or a dangerous person. In the end, I went with the latter, simply because I believed it would be the most interesting for the reader. And with those thoughts in mind, I sat down to start writing, thinking the story would be both simple and enjoyable to write.

Only later would I find out how wrong I was.

Notes on Writing the Book

For a variety of reasons, The Guardian was an exceptionally difficult novel to craft, and looking back, I suppose I should have expected it.

First, there was intense deadline pressure, primarily due to the fact that A Bend in the Road wasn’t completed until nearly April 2001. Usually, I try to start my novels in January, which left me nearly four months behind schedule when I first sat down to write.

In addition, at the time I started, our home life was extremely busy. My wife was pregnant with twins, we had two older sons and a toddler running around the house, and we were also in the process of remodeling our home. By early summer, my wife couldn’t keep up with the kids, and thus, I had to squeeze writing in whenever I could, as opposed to simply sequestering myself in the office for hours at a time.  There was a constant struggle to keep the ideas flowing steadily. For a three month period, my schedule was roughly the following: wake at four a.m., write for three hours, feed and entertain the kids until noon, do bills and paperwork while the toddler napped, feed and entertain the kids until eight, and then write again until 1:00 a.m. I slept an average of three hours a night, and I still consider that period as one of the most challenging in my life.

To make matters even more challenging, the novel kept growing longer – with every chapter I wrote, I would realize that yet another, unanticipated chapter, was suddenly necessary, due to the suspense elements in the novel. I’d write the chapter, then realize that because of what I’d written, I would need another character as well, one that I’d have to work in from the beginning. With every new page I wrote, I found myself crafting – and integrating – another page earlier in the novel. The process was exasperating and painfully slow.

What I originally thought would be an 80-90,000 word novel grew until it reached nearly 150,000 words. It’s hard to stay motivated when it seems as if you’re never going to finish.

Finally, the novel was completely different than anything I’d ever read, which greatly complicated my ideas for the structure. While I’ve read hundreds – even thousands – of thrillers, I wanted to build in a quality love story as well. Many thrillers have characters that fall in love in the course of the story, but the love story is always subordinated to the mystery and tension of the mystery itself. I wanted to write a novel with exactly the opposite effect. I wanted to write a love story with thriller elements, not a thriller with characters who fall in love. The difference seems subtle, but incredibly difficult to pull off, because “external” tension (will he hurt her?) is nearly always more interesting than “internal” conflict (will the characters fall in love?). But since I write love stories – and that’s what my readers want to read – I couldn’t allow that to happen.

There are other differences as well between love stories and thrillers; love stories require a slower pace with detailed settings, while thrillers require a fast pace, with limited settings. Love stories are usually written with two major characters, and – at the most – three other minor characters. Thrillers have three major characters, at least two major-minor characters, and a dozen minor characters, with all the lives intertwining. In the end, The Guardian essentially became two books in one; a love story, romantically slow in building, which was gradually replaced by a story with ever-increasing danger, written at an ever increasing pace. I say this in retrospect; at the time I was writing, my thoughts weren ’t nearly that clear.

I finished the novel while on a book tour in Jackson Mississippi, and you can’t imagine how relieved I was. On all my novels, I’d felt a sense of completion, but this was a much stronger. I felt as if I’d finally put the grueling summer behind me, and even better, I was confident as to how my editor would like the story. I sent the manuscript off to my editor with high hopes, and finished my tour in early November. In early December, I received my editors comments.

She liked the idea for the novel, she said, but she thought the story needed a great deal of work. She didn’t like the main male character, the main “dark” character, she didn’t like the pacing, she thought the entire book lacked tension, and that the last third of the novel had to be entirely rewritten from scratch. To my mind, it felt as if she wanted me to redo the entire thing.

Crestfallen, I called her on the phone and asked if she liked anything about the novel. My editor paused.

“I liked the dog,” she finally said.

I hung up the phone, depressed and anxiety ridden. I simply couldn’t imagine facing the manuscript again – it had been such a struggle that I’d come to loathe the writing process. Everything about the writing of the novel had been a miserable experience, and I didn’t have the energy to dive right into it again. I simply couldn’t do it. But I needed a book for the following autumn, and after a week of contemplation, I decided to write another novel instead. I set The Guardian aside and began writing Nights in Rodanthe on December 27th.

That novel was a joy to write, and I completed it in April, without so much as a hitch. From there, I returned to The Guardian and began making the substantial changes my editor required. Those changes were slow and tedious. It took me most of the summer and autumn to complete them, and I finally put the bed to rest in January, 2003. It was published two months later.

The Guardian taught me a lot about writing. While the book required extensive work, I’ve come to realize that my editor’s suggestions had been correct. I now believe The Guardian is one of the strongest novels I’ve written. It’s complex, original, believable, and enjoyable, and the final product is one in which I’m extremely proud to claim as my own. People have asked if I’m going to write another one like it – many people have come to regard The Guardian as their favorite – and in the future, I probably will. Now that I understand the structure, I could probably do another “Love-story-thriller” fairly easily. Just not yet. I still need to recover first.

Reviews

Compelling action….Sparks’s fans clamor for his brand of love story, and, with the added punch of suspense, this one will be another bestseller.
-- Publishers Weekly

Surprising…hair-raising….Thanks to the spiced-up suspenseful new recipe, readers will be in for a little heat.
-- Denver Post

An involving love story…an edge-of-your-seat, unpredictable thriller.
-- Booklist

An exciting mystery….Fans of Sparks won’t be disappointed.
-- Southern Pines Pilot (NC)

Nicholas Sparks is a top-notch writer. He has created a truly spine-tingling thriller exploring love and obsession with a kind of suspense never before experienced in his novels.
-- RedBank.com

FAQ

Why did Singer have to die?

Singer embodied a variety of themes in the novel: companionship, the love owners have for their pets and vice versa, loyalty, bravery, and even how a person can love someone in spite of his or her irritating habits. Yet, because I write tragedies, there has to be a tragic event in my novels  ...

Was the story inspired by actual events in your life, as your other novels were?

No, the story behind The Guardian was a figment of my imagination. I’ve never known anyone like Richard, nor has any member of my family. Thank goodness.

Is Swansboro a real town?

Yes, it is. Swansboro is located between Jacksonville, North Carolina, and Bogue Banks (an island near Morehead City). Swansboro, like many of the towns in eastern North Carolina, is small and picturesque, though some changes to the town were made in order to better accommodate the story.
How hard was it to create a "dark" character like Richard?

Creating frightening attributes in a character isn’t challenging; the challenge lies in trying to make such a character original. There have been so many “dark” characters on television, in movies, and in other novels that it seems almost impossible to come up with somethi  ...

Is there going to be a sequel to The Guardian?

Perhaps. I have no plans to attempt a sequel at the present time (or even in the near future) but I said the same thing about The Notebook years ago. Only one of my novels was written with a definite sequel in mind (
Mike was a fun character to write and, to be frank, I liked writing about someone who wasn’t completely comfortable with the opposite sex. I think Mike is a lot closer to reality than most of the major characters people come across in novels. Most seem too good, too confident to be re  ...

Will The Guardian be adapted into a film?

Who knows. I've written the first draft of the screenplay, but as of this writing, Hollywood has little interest in the project. Hence, I've kept the screenplay on file and haven't submitted it yet. I've learned never to predict what the studios intend to do with my work.