Lesley M. M. Blume is an author and journalist. She lives in New York City but is a nomad at heart. When she travels the world, she always takes with her a trunk filled with glistening practical-travel things. She has written five previous novels for Knopf, including Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters and Tennyson, which the Chicago Tribune praised for its “brilliant, unusual writing.”