LO! AN EVERGREEN BLOOMING

By Martha Duffy

WRITING A BEST SELLER is one of the few ways left to get rich solely on your own efforts. Just ask Richard Paul Evans, who has plenty of reason to celebrate this holiday season. His novella, The Christmas Box, an inspirational Christmas story he originally published himself, is sitting at or near the top of the nation's best-seller lists, with more than 2 million copies in print. A TV-movie version starring Maureen O'Hara and Richard Thomas will air Sunday on CBS. And a prequel will arrive in bookstores in time for Easter and Mother's Day.

Evans, 33, a former advertising executive in Salt Lake City, Utah, wrote the story in 1992 as a gift for his two daughters. A devout Mormon, he credits divine guidance at 4 a.m. for revealing the book's structure (a boon that should make him the envy of the entire writing community), and his work does bear a resemblance to the Christian fiction that has been a flourishing publishing genre in the past few years. In the book Richard, a young Salt Lake City man, and his wife move in with Mary, a luminous and wealthy old woman, who houses them in return for help with chores when they are just starting out. But Richard gets caught up in business concerns and neglects his young daughter. In a fraught and teary finale, Mary rescues his soul and then, as if on cue, expires.

Evans first showed his tale to friends in Salt Lake City, who loved it. But regional publishers weren't interested. So he used his own money to print the book and his experience in the ad business to promote it. He was tireless. "The war was won in the trenches," he says, "from one bookstore to another." The book grew from a regional phenomenon into a national hit, reaching the paperback best-seller lists last year. That prompted Simon & Schuster to pay $4.2 million for The Christmas Box and its prequel, Timepiece, putting Evans into Marcia Clark's stellar company.

Simon & Schuster Consumer Group president Jack Romanos believes The Christmas Box is an evergreen that will remain "under the Christmas tree for many years to come." Which is just what Evans, still evangelizing, is after. "Our goal is to make history with this book," he says. "It heals people and changes their lives."

--Reported by Andrea Sachs/New York

With reporting by Andrea Sachs/New York