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Biography                                  

 

It was a long and strange childhood...

I grew up running wild on an island in Maine. In addition to enduring the agonies of owning a motley crew of horses, my family also loved to sail—in small, tippy, old, leaky boats, and to ski— down windy, treacherous, ice-covered mountains.

So, it is any wonder that I chose books and libraries, safe, warm places, as a career? However, the zaniness that is inborn in my family (entertainers, toy inventors, and jokers) bubbled up in me and I was unable to stay the course of being normal. 

First, I did what few girls from small Maine towns did in the 1980’s; I headed off backpacking through Europe. Relieved to get the travel bug out of my system, I returned to study journalism at Syracuse University and then returned home to Maine to work as a children’s librarian. But…I couldn’t quite settle down and took a break to cook on a windjammer (I have served dinner for 36 from a rocking woodstove!). I tried again to take life seriously and headed off to earn a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science from Louisiana State University. (I hold an honorary ‘southern’ degree, a proud achievement for a Yankee).

Once again, however, the far reaches of the world beckoned and my husband and I accepted jobs at an international school in Brazil—land of Carnival, beaches, and endless music. Eleven years of international jaunting then followed: Saudi Arabia, England, Oman, The Marshall Islands, and finally Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The tales I can tell…

By this time, we had two children, Seth, aged 10, and Irene, aged 5, and we decided (well, actually my family told me) that was enough traveling! So, I am home again on the Island and really trying to be ordinary but lately thoughts of sailing to Antarctica have been creeping in…

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