It’s pretty cold here in New York, but I’m feeling warm right now as I think about a wonderful small writing shop located out on the North Fork of Long Island, where my family and I spend our summers. It’s a tiny paper shop, and it’s stocked with the most charming assortment of stationery, notepads,…
“The only thing I know about the dark is that you can’t see in it.” Like many of you I’m sure, I was so sad to learn about the death of Robert Redford earlier this month. I had lot of admiration for him – as an environmentalist, an activist, an entrepreneur, a director, and a…
It was late 1940, a brutal period for France, when part of the country was under Nazi occupation and the remainder soon would be, when something miraculous happened. A tiny community in the mountains of southern France, led by the charismatic pastor André Trocmé and a small group of others – including his wife, Magda;…
An abandoned infant with an ominous note pinned to her blanket; an American schoolteacher with a past she cannot reveal; a tiny town in the French mountainside with a dangerous plan; and an officer who suspects something might be amiss… It’s my pleasure to introduce you to… THE SECRET ORPHANAGE! Today is launch day, and…
It was one of the strangest towns I’d ever set foot in. But to the woman leading our nighttime walking tour, it was home. Last spring, my husband and I took a river cruise in southern France, and one of our stops along the Rhône was the medieval town of Viviers. A walled town that dates…
It was a simple train station, brick and stone, with a dark red door. Empty and abandoned, it sat nestled in the mountains of southern France. Truly, it was just a blip on an otherwise picturesque route that we were enjoying aboard the Tournon Steam Train one morning last June. Along with my fellow travelers, I…
Last night I did something I’ve meant to do for a long time. Something I’m sure many of you have done way before now. Something I’ve been on the brink of doing since July. I spit into a cup. Which, as I’m sure you realize, means that I submitted and sent off a DNA sample…
A faded restaurant menu from 1943; a memorial plaque with a mystery; a secret plan to feed those in hiding; and a grave mistake made in the hours before dawn… These are just some of the elements of my newest historical novel, The Forgotten Italian Restaurant. And I’m so excited to be writing about…
It’s a funny thing about novel writing – sometimes you realize connections between your fictional world and your real life only after the story is complete. That’s what happened to me with THE FORGOTTEN ITALIAN RESTAURANT, which launched on Aug. 21st. I found myself creating a wonderful character who serves as a substitute sister to…
The day after my parents were married, their car soared off the road and landed upside-down in a ditch. I remember hearing this for the first time when I was about nine years old. I was in the kitchen with my mother, who was telling the story to a friend on the phone. My parents…
