Nicholas Evans, journalist and author whose novel The Horse Whisperer sold millions of copies and became a successful film – obituary
msn.comJohn le Carré and Seamus Heaney, before becoming a full-time author and film-maker. After several lean years, his first success as an independent producer and screenwriter was with Murder By the Book (1991), which won the American ACE award for the best international film on cable television.
But by 1993 he again found himself in low water. Finances for a film he had been developing for two years collapsed, and at 42 he had neither money, work, nor any idea of what to do next.
Fobbing off his bank with groundless optimism about the film, he travelled to the American state of Montana to research a book, having got the idea for The Horse Whisperer from a farrier who told him about people with the mysterious gift of healing traumatised horses. “Yes, it was insane,” he agreed. “There I was, alone in this vast landscape, meeting people who healed f----d-up horses, and something came together for me.
It was the nearest thing I’ve ever come to a spiritual experience. ”Back in London, he wrote the first several thousand words and took them, with a two-page synopsis, to an agent.
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