I grew up in a house full of music — my father was a musical arranger, my mother a singer, and I was a budding pianist. My parents and their friends were extraordinarily talented and hard working. Their attention to detail set a standard for me in whatever I tackled in my life.

I majored in music at Brandeis University. For seven years I taught music and reading in junior high schools in New York City and New Rochelle, New York. I started teaching in 1961. I loved teaching and being with children.

In 1965, I went to Mc Comb, Mississippi, to teach at a freedom school. The experience changed my life. I met "extraordinary ordinary"
people — black Americans who had been deprived of rights that I took for granted, and who were threatened with death every day. Their courage inspired me. They were heroic. I knew there had to be many more "unknown heroes," people who helped change history. I set out to recover and write about this "lost" history. That was more than seventeen years ago.

I now divide my time between New York City, where I was born and grew up, and Copake Falls in upstate New York, where I garden and cook in between my research and writing. I also travel across the country, visiting schools, and talking to children.

I’m married to a wonderful man who is a painter and sculptor and a great flower gardener. We have eight grandchildren. Aren’t we lucky?