The rising storm

Suzanne Cecile Ebel was born on 27 September 1916 in Sutton, Surrey, London, England, UK, of an Irish mother and French father, a interior decorator who drove a Rolls-Royce. She was educated at Roman Catholic schools in England and Belgium. In London, she worked as a journalist at The Times Newspaper, as a public relations director, and from 1950 to 1972 for the advertising agency Young and Rubicam. She married a dentist, with whom she had a son, James, and an adopted daughter, Marigold, but the marriage faltered. In 1947, she met John Goodwin, a former lieutenant in the RNVR and later theatre director, and they had a son, Tim. They finally married in 1971, after she was widowed. She died on 28 February 2008. Suzanne published her first novel, Journey from Yesterday in 1963 which won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association. She wrote contemporary romances under her maiden name Suzanne Ebel, and after her marriage she used her married name Suzanne Goodwin for writing historical romances. She also used the pseudonym of Cecily Shelbourne. In 1986, she won the British Travel Association Award for her Guide to London's Riverside in collaboration with Doreen Impey.