My second most read essay on my Substack and my Medium pages is one that I am extremely proud of. I worked long and hard on this essay and really put my heart into it. This of course is my first love, or one of them, writing about writing. This is a story most people don’t know and more people should learn about.
The truth behind the tragic story of the wild bestseller Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier.
Jan Ricardo Maxwell was a woman whose life was destroyed by the novel Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. What do we owe those people who we base characters on? What is the moral responsibility of the creative impulse?
When I was young I hero worshiped Daphne Du Maurier and I will always admire her writing, her humor and her large body of work. But I will never think of her in the same way again, after learning of what she did to a blameless woman who did not deserve to be targeted in such a devious and cruel manner and whose life very well may have been devastated by the 1938 novel.
If you want to uncover the mystery of this novel, and the real lives hidden in its periphery, click the active link above and read on…
~Theresa Griffin Kennedy
"Who was the Anti-heroine in Daphne Du Maurier's famous novel REBECCA Actually Based on?"