Growing up on a farm on the Illinois prairie, Susan learned that books could take her anywhere, and reading and writing became passions that have accompanied her throughout her life. She earned an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana and a PhD in medieval studies from the University of California at Berkeley. After fifteen years of faculty and administrative appointments at the University of Texas, Tulane University, and Texas State University, she left her academic career to write full time.
Now, there are over four million copies of Susan’s books in print. Her best-selling mystery fiction includes the Darling Dahlias Depression-era mysteries, the China Bayles Herbal Mysteries, the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter, and (under the pseudonym of Robin Paige) a series of Victorian-Edwardian mysteries with her husband, Bill Albert.
Susan’s historical fiction includes The General’s Women, a novel about the World War II romantic triangle of Dwight Eisenhower, his wife Mamie, and his driver and secretary Kay Summersby; Loving Eleanor, a fictional account of the friendship of Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt; and A Wilder Rose, the story of Rose Wilder Lane and the writing of the Little House books. She is also the author of two memoirs: An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days and Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place. Other nonfiction titles include What Wildness Is This: Women Write about the Southwest (winner of the 2009 Willa Award for Creative Nonfiction); Writing from Life: Telling the Soul’s Story; and Work of Her Own: A Woman’s Guide to Success off the Career Track.
Susan is an active participant in the literary community. She is the founder of the Story Circle Network, a nonprofit organization for women writers, and a member of Sisters in Crime, Women Writing the West, Mystery Writers of America, and the Texas Institute of Letters. She and her husband Bill live on thirty-one acres in the Texas Hill Country, where she gardens, tends chickens and geese, and indulges her passions for needlework and (of course) reading.
Background material for this book, including recipes, suggestions for further reading, and some notes on Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal are available on Susan’s website: https://susanalbert.com/hemlock-book-28/