About

Hi there!

A Baltimore native, I earned my B.A. from Tufts University and my JD from Georgetown University Law Center. During law school, I married and moved to New York to practice litigation at a large firm for several years. When I became pregnant with my second child, I returned to Baltimore where, for the next twenty years, my husband and I raised our children, and I practiced law with my father.

Although I have been writing my entire life, for many years I channeled my writing into roasts for office and family events, journaling, and legal briefs. But in 2006, following a conversation about “bucket lists” during a family dinner, I finally got serious about my writing and began my first novel, writing in every spare moment I could manage as I continued to juggle life as a trial attorney, wife, and mother.

Following the death of my son, I immediately began to write my memoir, Can You Hear Me Now?, which tells the story of my fierce battle to save my son from the grip of mental illness and addiction. I wrote this memoir to grieve, try to understand and make sense of my life and my son’s life, and ensure I would never forget. In addition to my memoir, I have written four novels for which I am also seeking literary representation and publication:

(1) The Girls of Lizzy B is a young adult novel about four best friends their junior year of high school. Struggling to survive a home life of feuding parents and a cheating father, fiery Jemma secretly dates a much older man after her father forbids her from seeing him. Beautiful and brilliant Angelica fails to stand up for herself in a relationship that leads to an unwanted pregnancy. Elsie, who battles anxiety, struggles to find a sense of belonging in the dating world while facing the terrifying illness of one of her mothers; and gentle Violet secretly questions her sexual identity until, in the midst of a family crisis, she discovers love where she least expects it.

(2) In its sequel, The Year of Oncoming Traffic, life changes for Violet in the blink of an eye when she is nearly killed in a car crash that shatters both her leg and her dream of becoming a dancer. As the driver of the car , Elsie battles guilt and panic attacks, tormented by her inability to alleviate Violet’s suffering as well as by her inability to stop loving her ex-boyfriend. For Angelica, love is equally complicated as she struggles with the fallout of an emotionally abusive relationship her junior year that ended in an unwanted pregnancy. While Angelica and Elsie remain steadfast in Violet’s recovery, Jemma distances herself. Emotionally overloaded from her parents’ divorce, the departure of her boyfriend, and now the horror of Violet’s injuries, she turns to drugs for escape. As these four young women catapult through their senior year facing unprecedented challenges, their friendship provides the sense of belonging, acceptance, and unwavering support needed to stay true themselves.

(2) Something Good and Beautiful is a women’s fiction novel that celebrates the inner strength and resilience of women, the unbreakable bonds of family, and the courage to seek personal happiness.Told through the intertwining stories of three sisters raised in a large, tight-knit Jewish family by parents who value family above all else, Harriet, Molly, and Ruby navigate the complexities of love, loss, and forgiveness, discovering that even imperfect love and imperfect family can still be something good and beautiful.

(3) Butterflies Taste with their Feet is a coming-of-identity tale about the life-changing journeys from fear to courage of the family members and physician of a twelve-year-old transgender child living in a small mountain town where the enemy is not only the anti-trans culture but a Proud Boy bent on revenge.

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In my books, I explore relationships—parent-child, teenage romance, friends, sisters, and life partners. I write about people facing challenges, wading through the muck of life and, striving with grit and perseverance to overcome adversity. I like to examine thorny issues relating to parenting, mental illness and addiction, the limits of seemingly boundless love, and the importance of empathy, understanding, and friendship in our messy world.

I live in New Jersey with my husband and cat. As a retired trial attorney, I spend most of my free time writing. When I am not writing, I usually can be found practicing yoga. I ski well but not often, knit often but not well, love to cook with my husband, and laugh and cry easily when life gets big.