In her mid-career, Taylor Caldwell recognized her power as a conservative author with a large audience with special renown among conservatives in the 1950s through the 1970s, featuring her relationship to the John Birch Society and the apartheid government of South Africa. Peggy Fried, TC's daughter, travels the world on ocean liners and to other places as a high-placed tag-a-long with TC. Not her amanuensis, not her valet, not seriously her caretaker, and certainly not a close-at-home editor. As Peggy's oldest child, Michael Fried got responses from Peggy only from the world filtered through her mother. Still, unlike others in TC's orbit, Peggy responded to TC with considerable skepticism.