My Life in France

In 2015, my husband and I watched the film Julie and Julia. I thought that “Julie” was whiny and unlikable. Despite all of Amy Adams’s efforts to make Julie adorable, I thought that the real life character being portrayed on the screen was dull and forgettable. But, I loved her concept. I thought that her…

Signature: The Story of Clara Barton

Published by Grosset and Dunlap, the Signature “Story of” books are a biography series very similar to the famous Landmark and North Star children’s biography series. Like those series, the publishers at Grosset and Dunlap commissioned excellent authors to write biographies that would be appropriate for children. After having read several books in each series,…

The Terrible Speed of Mercy

Just over a year ago my Facebook book club decided that we wanted to harness some of the fun we saw in books like 84 Charing Cross Road and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. We developed a pen pal group and started exchanging letters with book friends all over the world. As…