My life has been one of enchantment since I was a small child in California and my grandfather took me to the library each week for my fill of books. From them I not only traveled the world in my imagination, but also fell under the magical spell of words. The love of writing and travel, and teaching about them, has defined my life.

As a student, I spent a year at the Sorbonne, and that experience became the subject of my first novel, That Paris Year, the first of my trilogy. As a mother, I accompanied my young family to Africa where we lived in the welcoming country of Ghana and traveled widely, sometimes by car, truck, Landrover or dug-out canoe. I also took a 2,000-mile journey following the Niger River with two other women where we traveled with Tuaregs, were chased by a warlord, and visited Timbuktu…