American writer, a journalist and novelist who shot to worldwide fame as the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Roots” in 1976. Haley preferred to write about the ordinary people in everyday life. A former member of the Coast Guard for 20 years, he found his greatest creative inspiration when he was sailing at sea and often while writing, he would book passage on a freighter or cargo vessel.
Haley was born in New York and raised by his maternal grandmother in the town of Henning, Tennessee while his dad was busy getting an education in the North. His mother died when he was young. His grandma instilled the values of respect and honor in Haley as he grew up in the South. While in the Coast Guard stationed at sea, he would write letters home for his shipmates. He received hundreds of rejection slips for eight years before he sold his first article. At one point in his life he had only 18 cents and two cans of sardines.
Haley put 12 years of research and writing into his personal masterpiece “Roots,” the gripping history of black families from slavery to the present day. Within two years of publication, his book sold 8.5 million copies, was printed in 37 languages and made into a mammoth ABC mini-series hit production. “Roots” won 271 awards, including the coveted Pulitzer Prize. His book generated a steady stream of royalties for the next ten years, a success that enabled him to work the international lecture circuit earning $250,000 a year.
In 1987, Haley put a stop to touring in order to get back to his focal point of writing. His second book, “A Different Kind Of Christmas” was written on a freighter trip from Long Beach, CA to Australia and was published in 1988.
Haley married three times, the third marriage dissolving from the pressure of sudden celebrity status with the publication of “Roots.” He has one daughter, Cindy, born in 1964 from his second marriage. She was raised in Augusta, GA and grew up to be an aspiring writer who rarely saw her famous father. Haley left Los Angeles in 1987 and moved back to Tennessee. He bought a Tudor mansion in Knoxville’s exclusive Sequoia Hills community. His second home was an 1830 renovated 120-acre farmhouse retreat in Norris, Tennessee.
In 1987, Haley landed in the hospital from exhaustion and bone inflammation.
He died of a heart attack on 10 February 1992 at 00:04 AM PST in Seattle, Washington.
Link to Wikipedia biography