About the Author

In his own words…

Books are meant to be held.

My father perhaps taught me this when he built me a wooden bookcase. It was a gift for my move to Chicago for my first big job, as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. I hadn’t a hint back in the 1980s that I was to become an author, but he probably did. My first book was published in 2007, shortly after he died.

My first three books were about tragedies; an odd choice for those who know me to be a pretty light, gregarious person. But I was drawn to drama, to injustice, and to thousands of pages of documents to scour for evidence and clues. I am a truth-seeker, which drew me first to journalism. One of my mantras is a line from the Robert Penn Warren masterpiece, All the King’s Men: “Truth was what I sought, without fear or favor. And let the chips fly.”

Perhaps halfway through my life, I went back to college, for two Master’s degrees, one in writing, one in poetry. Art needs occasional rekindling. The poetry, I believe, steered me into more beautiful, more hopeful stories, and my first book of poetry, Behold, is the first fruits of that new direction. I have a new nonfiction book in development on space and creation. 

I now have made my own grown children bookshelves for themselves. I keep a Little Free Library at my home, near a children’s park, in the hopes of engaging little eyes. It is thrilling when a child finds a book from the little box, sits right down and begins to read. Books are meant to be held.