Ellen Pompeo (Grey’s Anatomy) is executive producing a limited series based on Elin Hilderbrand’s Paradise series of novels, for ABC, under her own Calamity Jane production company, according to Deadline. The series is titled after the first of the trilogy, Winter in Paradise, according to Variety.
Irene Steele will be the heart of the series, a woman who formerly lived with her loving husband in an Iowa City Victorian house but whose life is unraveled after her husband’s death when she finds that he had been living a second life with another family in the Caribbean, according to Deadline. Throughout the series, Steele and her sons come to know the island of St. John, as well as the truth of her husband’s life, according to Variety.
André and Maria Jacquemetton, who served as writer-producers for all six season of Mad Men, will write the script for Winter in Paradise and will also executive produce alongside Pompeo. In addition, Laura Holstein, also of Pompeo’s Calamity Jane, Andrew Stearn of Andrew Stearn Productions and Hilderbrand herself will serve as executive producers for the series, according to Variety.
Hilderbrand’s trilogy of novels, Winter in Paradise, What Happens in Paradise and Troubles in Paradise were published, starting in 2018 and concluding in October 2020, and across all twenty-five of Hilderbrand’s novels, she has sold 10 million copies, according to Variety.