Bridges author Robert Waller dies

NEW YORK — Robert James Waller, whose bestselling , bittersweet 1992 romance novel The Bridges of Madison County was turned into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood and later into a soaring Broadway musical, has died in Texas, according to a longtime friend. He was 77.

Scott Cawelti, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, told the Associated Press that Waller died early Friday at his home in Fredericksburg, Texas. He had been fighting multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.

In Bridges, a literary phenomenon that Waller famously wrote in 11 days, the roving National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid spends four days taking pictures of bridges and also romancing Francesca Johnson, a war bride from Italy married to a no-nonsense Iowa farmer.

Waller’s novel reached No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list and stayed on it for more than three years. The Eastwooddirected 1995 movie grossed $182 million US worldwide.

Many critics made fun of Bridges, calling it sappy and clichéridden, but it turned the unknown writer into a multimillionaire and made Madison County, Iowa, an international tourist attraction.

After the novel’s success, Waller left Iowa, where he had grown up, and moved to a ranch in Texas. He divorced his wife of 36 years, with whom he had a daughter, and found a new partner.

Waller grew up in Rockford, Iowa, and taught management, economics, and applied mathematics at the University of Northern Iowa from 1968 to 1991. Waller’s seven books include Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend, which unseated Bridges on the bestseller list.