Linda CardilloLinda Cardillo grew up in a large extended family that always seemed to find itself around the table of one grandmother or another-in the dining room on winter Sundays and under the grapevines of her city grandmother or under the willow trees of her ountry grandmother in the summer. It was at those tables that she first heard love stories, of uncles stationed on remote islands during World War II and aunts who followed them, of beloveds who died tragically young or cosmopolitan boyfriends who frequented the best nightclubs in Manhattan. As a little girl, she used to sit under the table in her nana's kitchen, draw pictures with her twenty-four Venus colored pencils and just listen. The Venus pencils soon became pen and ink, and by the time Linda was in high school, the pictures she was drawing were conveyed in words. She kept alive the dream of writing a novel through many careers, as an editor of college textbooks, a business writer, a college and high school teacher of creative writing and English and a fundraiser. After many years and many rewrites, she came to understand the importance of perseverance in the writer's toolkit and was delighted to sell her first Harlequin book. Linda has been married for over twenty years to a German-born scientist. They spent several years living in Germany and love to travel, from the savannahs of Kenya to the moors of Scotland. They now live with their youngest child in a quintessentially New England town that was founded in the seventeenth century and welcome home their older two children for lingering meals around a table that bears a strong resemblance to those of Linda's grandmothers. Read More Read Less