I love the view from my studio in Brooklyn, although it challenges me now.  To the east is the altered Manhattan skyline; to the west are brownstones, factories, and church steeples; inserted between are huge construction cranes, standing tall.  I've always been drawn to big cranes -- they represent important work.  I come from Nordic people who knew about hard work.  I also come from Irish, Swiss, German, and French Canadians, who knew life was hard and proved it by going into the restaurant business.  So I have this heavy work ethic etched into my core along with a serious need to eat out. 

I get hungry when I write.  It's the call of my ancestors.  I'm hungry more and more these days.  But it isn't just for food.  It's for change. 

I grew up with storytellers.  Fiction always taught me about the real world.  It still does.  It always should.  But I grew up during a time when more stories stretched across generations.  We've lost some of that, I think, and we are suffering for it.  One of the colossal lies in this world is that adults and young people don't have much in common.  I believe a story shared between generations links people together.  And that is what I hope to do with my books and this site. 

Now available are enhanced classroom reading and teaching guides for Hope Was Here and Rules of the Road created by Robert Bergstrom, educational consultant and winner of the 2001 "Teacher of the Year" award from the Robert F. Wolf Teacher Excellence Foundation .  Coming this winter, Bob's classroom guide for Sticks.  Just posted is an intergenerational study guide created by family and marriage therapist, Dr. Catherine Hart Weber, for my newest novel, Stand Tall (click here).

Already available, thanks to the remarkable Dr. Teri Lesesne and Penguin Putnam, are reader companion guides for my first six novels  (click here).

This site, like my life, is under construction.  But I am a woman with a deep appreciation for construction cranes.  I hope you'll visit often and see how the work is progressing.