I live in Melbourne, Australia, in the beautiful Dandenong Ranges.

I am now retired from 40+ years of teaching English, History and Literature to high school students.

I fell naturally (!) into writing historical fiction.

Why about American history?

I was utterly fascinated by the Pulitzer winning book A Midwife’s Tale, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, in which she explores the diary of Martha Ballard, a midwife in the late eighteenth century in Maine, New England. The author’s detailed and riveting interpretations of Martha’s diary, a document long disregarded by male historians who thought Martha’s entries trivial and banal, is a triumph of social history.