You couldn't blame Kathryn Stockett for feeling down and depressed a few years ago. After all, the literary world seemed united in slamming the door in her face, as she struggled to find a publisher for a novel she had written called The Help.

Which is why - even now, as the royalty cheques from her phenomenal 2009 bestseller continue to mount - she won't easily forget the scratched note she once received from one hostile literary agent: "We don't want to do this. Please don't send me your work any more."

The bluntness of that message might have shrivelled the dreams of a less determined writer than the Mississippi-born Stockett, who had delved into her own background to lay bare a neglected aspect of the racist attitudes that pervaded the American South of half a century ago.

But Stockett persevered, even as the rejection slips piled up. Many turndowns gave no reason - the manuscript was simply returned.

But one agent did take the trouble to write a proper letter. It was still dismissive: "I don't think this would be saleable in the United States. No one would ever buy this book."

Stockett can only smile when she recalls that particular prediction, given what's happened in her life. A few days ago, The Help showed up as No. 6 on USA Today's bestseller list, marking the 140th consecutive week it has made it onto that newspaper's charts. And now, there's further vindication in that Oscar nomination for best picture, one of four nods given to the film version, which enjoyed a triumphant theatrical run last autumn and is now a hot seller on DVD.

"I took five years to write it," Stockett says now. "And then I started sending it to agents and I received 60 rejections. Finally, number 61 took it and sold it in about three weeks to Penguin."

And then the novel that nobody wanted took off like a rocket.

The blond and friendly Stockett retains a quality of childlike wonder about her success. She's also philosophical about those years of frustration, cheerfully pointing out that her original manuscript did need more work.

"So every time I received a rejection, I wanted to go back and make it better."

But she also sensed that she was battling a widespread perception within the book industry: that a novel about southern racism, no matter how uplifting, was no longer a marketable commodity.

Stockett had a childhood friend, actor and filmmaker Tate Taylor, who thought differently, and he ended up adapting and directing The Help for the screen.

He recognized that the novel did have something new to say in revealing the unknown story of the black women who worked as maids, housekeepers and nannies in the white households of a fiercely segregationist Mississippi town.

"Oh my gosh," Taylor told his friend, "we have the last remaining facet of the story that hasn't been told."

In fact, Taylor believed so strongly in Stockett's manuscript that he grabbed the film rights even before the book had found a publisher.

"I called Kathryn and said, 'This is fantastic. You cannot give up . and I'll make it into a movie.'"

It was an act of faith on Taylor's part, as he turned down other work during the period he was writing the screenplay.

"I wasn't being paid to adapt it, and I was broke afterwards," he says now. "But it was also a blessing . I had a whole year, without a bunch of people in my ear telling me how the story should go."

Stockett and Taylor grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1970s, when elements of the racism depicted in film and novel still persisted. Each was raised under the loving guidance of a black nanny-housekeeper.

"Kathryn and I like to refer to them as our co-mothers," Taylor says. "Mine was Carol Lee and hers was Demitri."

To which Stockett adds: "As children, we loved these women."

And because they were children, it took time to understand that racism still permeated the post-civilrights era. For example, the black help in a white household was forced to use a separate bathroom.

"You didn't put a big banner around it, saying this was the maid's bathroom," Stockett points out. "It was a much more subtle situation.

It was just a door on the side of my grandmother's house, and I never knew what it was, and never questioned it until I came back home from college. 'What is that door?' I asked. 'It's Demitri's bathroom,' I was told."

Stockett is embarrassed when she tells this story now. "It never occurred to me that she ever had to 'go.'"

Taylor remembers that some of his friends in Jackson lived in much older houses that had a bathroom in the garage. "I just thought it was that cool place where kids could get to pee when they were muddy," he laughs. "But no, it was for the maids. And I thought: Really?"

The 43-year-old novelist has been told that The Help is a healing story that can affect even readers who still have prejudices. But she hopes both novel and film come across as toughminded.

"I was really stubborn about this when I was writing the book. These women, I could not portray them as victims. That story has been told too many times. I wanted these women to look around themselves and say, 'Hey, this isn't cool.' And then they're brave enough to do something about it."

The main storyline of The Help deals with the decision of these black women - under the leadership of the characters played in the movie by Oscar nominees Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer - to tell the truth about their lives to a young, aspiring, white journalist played by Emma Stone.

Stockett says the era she depicted in her novel was both ridiculous in its prejudices and also frightening.

"It was against the law in the South for black and white to swim in the same swimming pool, to use the same telephone, even to attend the same school for the blind. Horrible."

Even so, Stockett can't stay away from the state of her birth. She's working on a new novel set in Oxford, Mississippi, in the 1920s.

"I love that era. That was such a time. The skirts were getting shorter and women were smoking, and booze was against the law. It's things women had to do - even if they were wealthy and grew up strong Christians - and the rules they had to break just to get by.

"I'm going to get into a lot of trouble with this one, I'll tell you that. But I usually piss everybody off a little bit."