"The New York Times" summed up her career Strong-willed women, many of them Jewish and red-haired as well, appear again and again in Ms. Plain’s fiction. Some of her novels use historical settings — “Crescent City,” published in 1984, was set in the Jewish community of Civil War-era New Orleans. Other books tell stories about contemporary issues, sometimes inspired by the headlines — divorce (“Promises”), adoption (“Blessings”), child sexual abuse (“The Carousel”) or babies accidentally switched at birth (“Daybreak”). All of them are full of passion, but there is very little explicit sex. At her death, there were over 30 million copies of her twenty-plus novels in print in 22 languages. Twenty-one of her novels appeared on the "New York Times" bestseller list. Plain did not own a computer, and wrote all of her novels long-hand on a yellow pad. "A disciplined worker, she wrote for several hours in the morning five days a week. She produced a 500- or 600-page novel every year or so."