Sparks, Micah 1964-

views updated

SPARKS, Micah 1964-

PERSONAL:

Born Michael Charles Sparks, December, 1964; name changed; son of Patrick Michael (a college professor) and Jill Emma Marie Thoene (a homemaker and optometrist's assistant) Sparks; married; wife's name, Christine.

ADDRESSES:

Home—California. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Warner Books, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER:

Owner of a manufacturing company. Has worked in real estate and other businesses.

WRITINGS:

(With brother, Nicholas Sparks) Three Weeks with My Brother (travel memoir), Warner Books (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

A round-the-world trip that Micah Sparks and his brother, best-selling novelist Nicholas Sparks, took early in 2003 allowed them not only to visit many famous sites but to revisit their family history as well. That history includes some difficulties and tragedies. Their family was loving and unconventional, but endured poverty when the brothers were young and their father was in graduate school. Their mother died at a relatively young age—forty-seven—in a horseback-riding accident. Their only sister later died of brain cancer, while their father was killed in a traffic collision. As adults, Micah and Nicholas forged successful careers—Micah in business, Nicholas with his writing—and started families of their own, but there were still some sorrows: one of Nicholas's children died in infancy and another had serious health problems. Through it all, the brothers maintained their close relationship and their sense of humor, both of which are reflected in Three Weeks with My Brother, a book detailing the pair's travels and memories.

The Sparks' guided tour took them to such places as the Taj Mahal in India, the Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia, and Easter Island in the Pacific. Along the way, as they took notes for the planned book and shared reminiscences, "we knew we would relate the story of our family and the brothers," Micah Sparks told Jay MacDonald in an interview for BookPage.com. Alternating impressions of their trip with narratives about the family, the book is "a poignant, funny and ultimately life-affirming family memoir that only the Sparks brothers could have written," MacDonald remarked. People critic Debby Waldman thought Three Weeks with My Brother "fresher and more authentically poignant" than Nicholas Sparks's frequently tear-jerking novels. A Publishers Weekly reviewer, meanwhile, deemed the book "refreshingly honest and perceptive," demonstrating how the brothers "evolved" during their trip. And in Booklist, Patty Engelmann concluded that the volume is "a treat for those who want to find out what makes a family strong."