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Melanie Benjamin is the New York Times bestselling author of The Children's Blizzard, Mistress of the Ritz, The Girls in the Picture, The Swans of Fifth Avenue, The Aviator's Wife, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, and Alice I Have Been. Benjamin lives in Chicago, Illinois, where she is at work on her next historical novel.
Melanie Benjamin's website
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This page includes two interviews with author Melanie Benjamin; in the video below, she discusses The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, and, in the written piece beneath, she explains the back story to her first novel, Alice I Have Been. In a separate essay, she explains why she chose to write about Anne Morrow Lindbergh in The Aviator's Wife.
Why Anne Morrow Lindbergh?
by author Melanie Benjamin
What was I thinking, writing a novel about Anne Morrow Lindbergh?
That is a question I asked myself every time I sat down to work on The Aviator's Wife.
For Anne Morrow Lindbergh guarded her privacy fiercely and, at times, I felt she was eluding me just to make that point! My other heroines - Alice Liddell in Alice I Have Been and Lavinia Warren Stratton in The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb - gave up their secrets easily, almost eagerly. Anne, however, did not.
But that was what attracted me to her story in the first place - because of how elusive Anne remains to this day. She is known in fragments but never completely. Some are aware of her child's horrific kidnapping and murder. Others remember her chiefly as the shy, pretty bride of the most heroic man of his time. Many women revere her as an early feminist ...
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester, England on January 19, 1946. He was educated at the City of London School from 1957 to 1964 and at Magdalen College, Oxford, from which he graduated in modern languages (with honors) in ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Alice I Have Been
Try:
Arthur & George
by Julian Barnes
Marie Benedict is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Queens of Crime, The Mitford Affair, Her Hidden Genius, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, The Only Woman in the Room, Lady Clementine, Carnegie's Maid, ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Aviator's Wife
Try:
Lady Clementine
by Marie Benedict
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