Cleo Virginia Andrews, commonly known as V.C. Andrews, was born June 6, 1923 in Portsmouth, Virginia. V.C. died of breast cancer in 1986; she was 63 years-old. Starting out in school, V.C. was very successful; she was able to skip the third and sixth grades. When she was fifteen, Virginia won a scholarship for writing a parody of Tennyson's Idylls of the King (www.completevca.com) V.C. earned her high school diploma from Woodrow Wilson High School in Portsmouth, Virginia. After she had graduated high school, she lived at home with her family.While Andrews did have to stay home and try to recuperate after undergoing many more surgical attempts to correct the damage done to her back after a fall down the stairs at school, (which lead her to …show more content…
She knew that no matter how hard she tried to be just like her older (and “better”) sister, her father could never love her the same way he loved her sister. Her sister was perfect to her family- until one day when the “first and best” Audrina was raped and murdered in the woods when she was just nine years-old. As the story continues, it brings the read to the upstairs part of the Adare house which had a room that was locked completely. That room held everything that belonged to her sister. Dolls, clothes, games, and her sacred rocking chair, which “held the secret of all her sister's gifts”. Audrina’s parents lock her up in the room and force her to continually rock in the rocking chair in order to gain access to these “gifts”. V.C. Andrews never married or had any children of her own. She moved around the states with her mother. V.C. was very secretive with her personal life; especially when it came to her age. Her writing was usually done while lying in bed unless she was being “propped up in a body brace” (www.encyclopediavirginia.org ). Aside from critics who usually “dismissed Andrew’s novels”, V.C. Andrews always had her spot on the best-sellers