I was born in Chicago, but grew up in Sacramento, CA. After I graduated from Stanford University, I worked in the Midwest as a newspaper reporter, a hospital PR director, and the assistant director of a convention and visitors bureau. I began writing books for children when my youngest son was born, and collected 156 rejections before my first book sale six years later. In the 1990s, I published seventeen books for young readers, including eight as lead author of the Magic Attic Club. After a long period of loss and writer's block, I earned my MFA in Writing for Children at Vermont College. My critical thesis was entitled "Good Grief: Making Death and Bereavement Authentic for Middle Grade Readers." GIVING UP THE GHOST (Peachtree, 2007) is the first published book of my "second career." It was inspired by my mother's eight-and-a-half-year battle with Stage 4B endometrial cancer, my own work as a hospice volunteer, and a love affair with New Orleans that began when our middle son attended Tulane. Those same events later inspired ZAYDE COMES TO LIVE (illustrated by Kristina Swarner, Peachtree, 2012), my first picture book. It deals with death and the afterlife from a uniquely Jewish perspective, while demonstrating respect for all religions. ZAYDE COMES TO LIVE won a 2013 Sydney Taylor Honor Book Award for Younger Readers and a Parents' Choice Recommended Award. I live in Massachusetts and in Arizona.