Marsha Norman she could not have written it. According to an interview in "The New York Times", "Ms. Norman stayed away from the theater and turned to screenplays, including a 1986 movie adaptation of " 'Night, Mother" that starred Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft and failed to impress critics. She was in high demand in Hollywood, though not always for films that she liked, or that studios would approve." Norman wrote the book and lyrics for the musical "The Secret Garden", an adaptation of the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel "The Secret Garden", and won the Tony Award for Best Book in 1991.
Frances Hodgson Burnett evening salon and soon attracted visitors, meeting Stephen Townsend for the first time. Despite her busy schedule, she felt ill from the heat and the crowds of tourists, spending protracted periods in bed. With her sons, she moved on to spend the winter in Florence, where she wrote "The Fortunes of Philippa Fairfax", the only book to be published in England but not in the United States. That winter "Sara Crewe or What Happened at Miss Minchin's" was published in the United States. She would go on to make "Sara Crewe" into a stage play, and later rewrite the story