Early years Francine Rivers is the daughter of a
police officer and a
nurse. From the time she was a child, Rivers wanted to be a published author. She attended
Amador Valley High School in
Pleasanton, California. She attended the
University of Nevada, Reno, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and journalism. After her graduation she spent time as a newspaper reporter, writing obituaries and human interest stories.
Redeeming Love updates the
Old Testament book of
Hosea to the
American West of the 1850s and tells the story of a prostitute named Angel, who is eventually reformed and converted to Christianity by the stoic patience and love of a frontier farmer named Michael Hosea. Rivers' subsequent novels have all been in the inspirational fiction genre, as Rivers wants to "illustrate Christ and the Christian walk, to address difficult problems and write realistic stories." Francine Rivers refers to the books written before her conversion to
Christianity as her "
B.C." (before Christ) bibliography. She has purchased the publication rights to her earlier romance novels so that she can prevent them from being released again, but some titles have been rereleased and others circulate in used bookstores. In 2007, her novel
The Last Sin Eater was made into
a feature film, directed by
Michael Landon Jr. and distributed by
Fox Faith. However, the film was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and released in 2022.
Personal life Francine Rivers is married to Rick Rivers and they live together in northern
California (where the action in many of her contemporary novels is set). They have three children: Trevor, Shannon, and Travis; and five grandchildren. ==Film adaptations==