Benvenuto in Italia! (Welcome to Italy)

My first two novels were set in Italy. Well, you'd get a little bit of an argument from my Italian friends on Defending Irene. It takes place in the Alto Adige, the Italian Tyrol. Geographically and culturally, it lies about halfway between Verona and Innsbruck. Fifty percent of the population speaks German; the other fifty percent speak Italian. Almost 100% of the local population would, however, agree that a girl shouldn' t be playing on a boys' soccer team. But that's just what my main character Irene does when she discovers that Merano doesn't have a team for girls.

My second novel, Saving the Griffin, takes place in Tuscany. It was inspired by this stone griffin that I picked up in Siena. You can find the whole story about that on my webpage, .

I now have a third novel under contract, a YA mystery. It isn't set in Italy. The first draft, however, was written in Italy when I was missing my friends back in Missouri.