What you are about to read is a true life rags to riches story. That’s the kind of story that inspires most of us.

Joanne was working as a researcher for Amnesty International when she conceived the idea for a series of stories. But for the next 7 years she had no time to write.

Her mother died. Her first child was born. She divorced her husband and lived in poverty, sleeping with her child in her car.

This may sound like a sob story that will have nothing less than a bitter end. It isn’t.

Jo was destined for great things.

Forbes magazine publisher Rich Karlgaard tells Jo’s story and those of other surprising successes in his book “Late Bloomers.” He tells of people who made major achievements later in life.

In 1980, Karlgaard was 25 and working as a security guard. Just after dark, he heard barking from the lumber yard next door. He came face-to-face with his counterpart at the fence – a guard dog. This was sobering. He was a Stanford University graduate and his peer was a Rottweiler.

About that time, he read about Steve Jobs, also 25. He took Apple computers public, changed the industry and become fabulously rich. Karlgaard was poor and stuck. Is it that unusual? No, he writes.

“Today we are madly obsessed with early achievement,” he writes in Late Bloomers. “We celebrate those who explode out of the gates, who scorch the SAT, get straight As, win a spot at Harvard or Stanford, and headline those 30-under-30 lists.

“Precocious achievement is the exception, not the norm. The fact is, we mature and develop at different rates. The talents and passions that we have to offer can emerge.

“Late bloomers are everywhere once you know to look for them,” he writes.

In high school, New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady, winner of 6 Super Bowls, wasn’t on most recruiters’ radar. He was 199th selected in the 2000 NFL draft.

When the Patriots’ starting quarterback was injured, Brady, 24, finally got his big chance and became a spectacular success.

How many of us were overlooked in our school years or dismissed early in our careers? Karlgaard asks. What gifts might we possess that haven’t yet been discovered but that could give us wings to fly?

Astronaut Scott Kelly has spent more than 500 days in space, the most of any American. He said he was so bored in high school that “I finished in the half of the class that made the top half possible.”

Martha Stewart was 35 when she started catering in a friend’s basement and 42 when her first recipes were published.

Toni Morrison was 39 when her 1st novel, “The Bluest Eye,” was published. She won a Pulitzer Prize at 56 and the Nobel Prize in Literature at 61.

Jo, who you read about sleeping in her car at the beginning of this story, uses the pen name J.K. Rowling. After she created Harry Potter at age 35 she became one of the wealthiest women in the world.

Is your greatest achievement yet to come?

Who knows? It’s never too late.

Are you a maverick?

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