Information About the Author

Russell was born to an army Marine father and Navy nurse mother and harkens from the suburbs of Chicago. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a Ph. D. in biological anthropology and has since written four novels. Her first two works, The Sparrow and its sequel Children of God, are an exploration of her experience with faith, having undergone a series of spiritual reformations from Catholocism to Atheism in her teenage years, then from Atheism to Jusaism in adulthood. Her third work, entitled A Thread of Grace, accompanied her study of an Italian renaissance that occured during WW2, and investigates the lives of Jewish refugees in the northern half of the country. Her fourth and latest publication, Dreamers of the Day, revolves around the Cairo Peace Conference of 1921 that is responsible for much of the dissonance between western and middle eastern countries today.