Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Mary Doria Russell was born in suburban Chicago in 1950. Her mother was a Navy nurse and her father was a Marine Corps drill sergeant. She and her younger brother, Richard, consequently developed a dismaying vocabulary at an early age. She learned discretion at Sacred Heart Catholic elementary school; how to diagram sentences at Glenbard East High; cultural anthropology at the University of Illinois; social anthropology at Northeastern University in Boston; and biological anthropology at the University of Michigan.
Mary and Don Russell have been happily married for an unusually high percentage of the years since 1970. Don is a software engineer and one of the founders of AllTech Medical Systems, which designs and manufactures medical imaging equipment for the Chinese domestic market. They have one adult son, Daniel. They live in Cleveland.
From the author's website
Mary Doria Russell's website
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I am a big fan of your novels. What took so long for a new one?
I've become a dues-paying member of the sandwich generation while writing
this book. Like many Baby Boomers, I'm helping elderly and infirm relatives
through illnesses and bereavement, just as my teenage son is learning to
drive, starting to date, getting his heart broken, applying for summer jobs
and college. My own health did a power-dive, and that episode took a two-year
chunk out of my life. Thank God, my husband has been healthy all this time, so
the household has run fairly smoothly!
Even without all that, A Thread of Grace would have been a bear. None of
the characters are American, and the story is set in World War II Italy, so I
am not drawing on my own language, culture or personal experiences at all. A
dear friend advised me to finesse the issue: "Just have everyone say Ciao a
lot and eat pasta!" But WWII is living memory and a topic of lively
scholarly interest. There will be plenty of reviewers and readers who'll
notice mistakes. And I feel a great responsibility to the people who entrusted
their memories and personal stories to me. So I've tried to get every
miserable little detail right, ...
Ramona Ausubel is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of the novel No One Is Here Except All of Us and the short story collection A Guide to Being Born. Her work has been ... (more)
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