ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts and attended Harvard College. After getting my bachelor’s degree in English in 1981, I ran away for two years, bicycling and camping in western and eastern Europe. On my return, I wrote my first book, Stealing from a Deep Place: Travels in Southeastern Europe. Seven books have followed, five of them novels. I worked freelance as a journalist for a short time, writing for Travel-Holiday, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker. Then for a number of years I managed to live exclusively from my books; now I occasionally teach at Colgate University. I live in Ithaca, New York.