General Information on Message in a Bottle

Who

Message in a Bottle was a story inspired by his father.

Message in a Bottle is the story of Garrett Blake and Theresa Osborne, following in third person narrative emphasis by Theresa Osborne, a thirty-six-year-old divorced mother.

What

Message in a Bottle is a love story about a lonely widower, Garrett Blake, who sends messages in bottles to his deceased wife Catherine. Theresa Osborne finds one such letter, and decides to find out what sort of man loves so intensely.

Message in a Bottle, the second novel by Nicholas Sparks, is approximately 92,000 words.

Where

Message in a Bottle was written in Simpsonville, South Carolina and his home in North Carolina.

The setting of the novel is Wilmington, North Carolina.

When

Message in a Bottle was begun in the spring of 1996. Work continued until August, 1996, and continued from February, 1997 through May of 1997. Film rights were sold in March, 1997 (when the novel was half-completed), and the novel was published in the spring of 1998. It spent nearly seven months on the best-seller list in hardcover, and an additional five months on the paperback best-seller list. The film premiered in February, 1999 and opened number one at the box office and eventually grossed $120 million.

The story is a contemporary one, set in the mid-late 1990s.

Theme

Love after grief.

Genre/Sub-Genre

Dramatic Fiction/Love Story