I grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, in the house on the cover of Book 3 of the Olivia series, not far from the location of Olivia's farm. While studying at the Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin, I spent two summers in Israel and ended up coming back to make my life here. Since then I've spent a lot of time traveling between the Middle East and the Midwest, loving both my homes. While living on Kibbutz Ein Tsurim I learned the story of the Etzion Bloc during Israel’s War of Independence – from people who had lived through it. It was many years before I dared to try to put it down on paper. At that time, fantasies aside, I considered writing nothing more than a hobby. I did, however, post the first chapters of The Lonely Tree on a writers' wor
