Shelley Fraser Mickle grew up in a small cotton town in Arkansas, graduated from the University of Mississippi and studied writing at the Harvard Extension School and Wellesley College. Her first novel, THE QUEEN OF OCTOBER was a N.Y. Times Notable Book and a Library Journal top 10 book of l989. Her second novel, REPLACING DAD, won a Friends of American Writers Award and was made into a CBS/Hallmark Channel movie starring Mary McDonnell, academy award nominee for her role in Dances with Wolves. Shelley's latest novel THE OCCUPATION OF ELIZA GOODE, researched and written over 7 years, illuminates women's history, featuring a camp-follower prostitute during the Civil War as she transforms herself from prostitute to laundress to nurse to officer's wife.