Born in Chicago, Illiinois, the author grew up to live her girlhood fantasy of living on a ranch out West. She and her retired Chicago police horse, turned cow pony, settled on a small ranch in Hill Country Texas before relocating to New Mexico on the El Paso, Texas border. Her grade school teachers predicted she’d be a novelist. It was a long, twisting trail from motherhood to entreprenuer and various jobs in the engineering and accounting fields, not to forget award-winning, professional visual artist, to her first published novel. She won third place in Southwest Writers Western Historical novel contest and made the short list in the Literary Awards Program of the Santa Fe Writing Project among other literary acknowledgements.