Impoverished journalist whose debut novel became an international bestseller

When Nicholas Evans finished writing The Horse Whisperer, he could scarcely have imagined it would become one of the most successful novels in the history of publishing.

It was his first novel and published in 1995, dominating the bestseller lists for months, notching up sales of 15 million copies and being translated into 40 languages. On the basis of a few chapters, the film rights were snapped up in a bidding war for more than NZ$4M by Hollywood star Robert Redford, who went on to produce, direct and star in the 1998 movie, alongside Kristin Scott Thomas and a 14-year-old Scarlett Johansson.

The story concerns a teenage Grace

Maclean

(Johansson), who has been traumatised by a road accident in which she and a friend are hit by a truck while riding their horses. The friend and her horse are killed, and Grace and her horse, Pilgrim, are both injured, physically and psychologically. In desperation Grace’smother, Annie (Scott Thomas), takes her daughter and Pilgrim to the wilds of Montana in search of awise cowboy, Tom Booker (Redford), celebrated for his mystical talent of being able to communicate with horses – a ‘‘horse whisperer’’. A strange healing process takes place, which changes the lives of both mother and daughter.

Evans had first heard about ‘‘horse whisperers’’ from a blacksmith in Dartmoor, southwest England. Enthralled, he began researching them in libraries, then seeking out practitioners, first in Europe and then in the United States.

The success of the novel and film meant Evans, whose precarious financial situation was transformed almost overnight, was able to address large audiences and command large fees for talks about his writing.

Yet audiences would have been equally captivated by the plot of his own life, which would, in a tragic twist in 2008, almost certainly have made for another bestseller. He had picked some wild mushrooms on his brother-in-law’s estate in the Scottish Highlands and cooked them in butter and parsley: what unfolded was a chilling and terrifying family drama. The mushrooms, it transpired, were poisonous, and Evans, along with his second wife, his brother-in-law and his wife, would be left fighting for survival. Their bodies ravaged by the poison, all would suffer serious long-term health issues.

Nicholas Benbow Evans was born in 1950 in the English Midlands. His father, Anthony, was the sales director of an engineering company that made parts for buses, and his mother, Eileen, was a keen amateur pianist. Evans had a distant relationship with his father, who was often away, but a close one with his mother, who adored him. He was later devastated by her death of cancer.

At 8, he was sent to boarding school, just two miles away. When he was 13 his family moved to Stratford-upon-avon. ‘‘As a kid growing up in the country, I did nothing but play cowboys and Indians,’’ he recalled. ‘‘And I was always the Indian. The Last of the Mohicans was, by far, my favourite movie.’’

After school, he went to Oxford to read law. He gained a first but chose to go into journalism, much to his father’s displeasure.

Heworked for three years on the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle and then got a job as a researcher for the current affairs programme Weekend World. In the mid-1970s he became editor of The London Programme and then Melvyn Bragg’s deputy on The South Bank Show. In 1984 he went freelance, making several television programmes and producing a film for which he also wrote the script, Just Like a Woman (1992), starring Juliewalters.

Evans, who in 1973 had married Jenny Lyon, a fellow undergraduate whom he had met at Oxford, now found himself struggling to pay the school fees of their two children, Max and Lauren. Instead of seeking a regular

‘‘As a kid . . . I did nothing but play cowboys and Indians. And I was always the Indian.’’

job he sat down to write a novel. He sent several chapters to his agent, who sent them on to six publishers. Aweek later the film deal was sealed at that year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Only his wife was aware that he had just been given a diagnosis of skin cancer and did not even know if he would live another six months, let alone long enough to complete the novel. Fortunately the melanoma was successfully removed.

The Horse Whisperer transformed his life, but it also brought heartache. His marriage collapsed, having been destabilised in part by his sudden stardom, and he set up home with Charlotte Gordon Cumming, a singersongwriter (who wrote the 2001 Sugababes hit Soul Sound) and the daughter of Sir William Gordon Cumming, the Scottish clan chief.

Charlotte survives him with their son, Finlay, as well as Max and Lauren and a son, Harry, from a relationship with television producer Jane Hewland.

Evans followed up his debut novel with The Loop (1998), a story about a domineering rancher and his sensitive 18-year-old son, Luke, caught up in a conflict between the citizens of an area of Montana and federal wildlife agents. The Smoke Jumper (1999) centred on a love triangle tested to its limits during the course of amountain inferno into which firefighters are parachuted to put out the blaze. Both novels sold five million copies despite some poor reviews.

A few years later The Divide (2005) told the story of a divorce and its violent effect on a family, while The Brave (2009) depicted Tommy Bedford, a quirky loner estranged from his son, Danny, a Usmarine serving in Iraq who is chargedwith murder.

All of his novels were set against the vast canvas of the American West, which as a boy he became obsessed with. Yet, despite his close call in the Highlands, one of his great loveswas the British countryside: ‘‘It’s so damn safe. Hiking in a place with things that can kill you heightens your senses.’’

Evans, his wife and her brother were each left without a functioning kidney after the mushrooms incident. In 2011, aged 61, he underwent a transplant using a kidney donated by his daughter Lauren. His wife also had a kidney transplant after the mother of her son’s friend offered to donate hers.

Newspaper reports had called Evans ‘‘the luckiest man in Britain’’ when he sold The Horse Whisperer. Even after his ordeal in the Highlands, he held this to be true. He launched a charity, Give a Kidney – One’s Enough, to encourage people to donate to a stranger on the transplant list.