Of the many books I've written, I've never received as much immediate interest from any title as I have from this one. Mention Looking for Peyton Place to people, and eyes light, brows raise, smiles form. I don't kid myself; it isn't the Looking for part that draws attention, but the Peyton Place part. Peyton Place, both the fictitious town and the book, has become something of an American lexicon. Even those born long after the book's heyday know its name.

How to not know Peyton Place? For years it has titillated the American psyche with its glimmer of scandal and sex. Most outrageously, perhaps, it entered the Congressional record in October of 1998 on the eve of the Clinton impeachment hearings, when a member of the House of Representatives asked, "Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?" More recently, a Newsweek cover story mentioned it in the same breath as the new television hit, Desperate Housewives. An Australian race horse is named Peyton Place. As I write this, 2005 is in its first month and I've read about the Town Board member in Nevada who referred to Peyton Place in criticizing the in-fighting at a meeting. And then, of course, there is Peyton Manning, quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts. While the references here aren't to scandal and sex, the puns are plentiful. "Pre-snap drill puts Raiders in Peyton's place," ran a San Francisco Chronicle headline; "Peyton's place was in the end zone Sunday," read a Sports Illustrated article; "Foxboro Not Peyton's Place," was a headline out of Boston.

Peyton Place almost didn't happen. The book was rejected by every publisher until it reached the desk of Kitty Messner of Jullian Messner, Inc. In marked contrast to the prominence of women in publishing today, in the 50s Ms. Messner was one of only two female publishers. The other, Helen Meyer of Dell, purchased the paperback rights to Peyton Place, teaming with Kitty Messner to ensure its publication.

The year was 1956, and the success of Peyton Place took the book world by storm. More copies sold in a shorter period of time than any other book had to date — 60,000 in the first ten days, more than 100,000 in the first month. By the end of its first year, Peyton Place was sitting at the top of the bestseller lists with nearly 300,000 hardcover copies in print. In anticipation of the paperback edition, an initial print run of 1.5 million was raised to 2 million. Dell was said to have thought this the largest single first printing for a novel. To date, after nearly 50 years in print, Peyton Place has sold nearly 12 million copies.

How to explain the success of Peyton Place? The times, for one thing. The 50s were boring. This was the Ozzie and Harriet decade, when women were expected to conform to the image of the model wife, mother, and suburbanite. Obedience was the norm, "good" girls revered, rebelliousness discouraged. Passions were lived out vicariously by watching James Dean in "Giant," listening to Elvis Presley ... or reading Peyton Place.

Hype also played a role in the book's explosive success. Well before its publication, word spread that an innocent young woman from a small town had written a scandalous novel. The emphasis on "innocent" was reinforced by the author photo chosen for the back of the book. The shot, taken by Larry Smith of the Laconia (NH) Evening Citizen, showed Grace Metalious at work wearing a man's hunting shirt, rolled up jeans, and sneakers.

Critics panned the book. It simply didn't conform to their image of proper literature. They thought it poorly conceived, poorly plotted, and poorly written. As for the sex, they considered it indecent, and they weren't alone. Of the states that attempted to ban Peyton Place, the case against the book in Rhode Island went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, before censorship was declared and sales of the book were allowed.

Naturally, these happenings made Peyton Place even more appealing to the general public.

I knew Peyton Place from way back. Barely into my teens when it was making its clandestine way from bedroom to bedroom, I remember giggling over the pages with friends who had sneaked it from their mothers' nightstands. My fascination with

I knew Peyton Place from way back. Barely into my teens when it was making its clandestine way from bedroom to bedroom, I remember giggling over the pages with friends who had sneaked it from their mothers' nightstands. My fascination with Grace Metalious, however, didn't grow until I was a writer myself, plotting a book about a small town secrets. I reread Peyton Place to see how Grace had done it, using her book as my guide. It was only as the years passed — and writing books about small town scandals become my trademark — that I grew enamored of the woman herself.

Finding information on her was difficult. Grace Metalious was born in 1924 and died in 1964 at the age of 39. Having lived such a short time and only written four books, there were few biographical pieces written during her life. In 1965, though, perhaps hoping to take advantage of the lingering prominence of her name and the sudden tragedy of her death, Dell published a biography of her. Written by June O'Shea with George Metalious, Grace's ex-husband, The Girl From "Peyton Place" offered dates and places, but also expressed much of the heartache, love, and, I believe, guilt that George felt in the wake of Grace's death. A more lengthy and impartial biography, Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious, was written by Emily Toth, a Ph.D. professor at Louisiana State University. First published in 1981, it was reissued in 2000.

Though I read many other pieces, these two books gave me as much solid biographical detail on Grace Metalious as I was to find in the rest. I found the flavor of the Franco-American city of Manchester and Grace's childhood years from Robert Perrault, a professor at St. Anselm's College in Manchester, an expert on that city, and a frequent lecturer on the subject. I found an informative essay on the sociological factors that give context to the success of Peyton Place in an introduction written by Ardis Cameron for the 1999 publication of the latest edition of Peyton Place, by Northeastern University Press.

Of all that I learned, what intrigued me most was why a woman who had attained the success Grace had with Peyton Place would be unhappy enough to drink herself to death at such a young age. She needed something in her life; she was looking for something. Hence my book, Looking for Peyton Place. My premise is that she was looking for a place to call home, where people loved her, where she was accepted faults and all, where she belonged.