Nancy Geary

I was born in New York City. Other than a year at boarding school when I was constantly homesick, I was educated in Manhattan and graduated from the Spence School, an all- girls school on the upper east side. Because my parents were divorced, I split my summer vacations between Southampton, New York, where my father had a home, and Manchester, Massachusetts, where my great-grandmother lived.

I graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1987 where I studied American History and "Law, Ethics and Public Policy," an independent concentration the curriculum for which I designed myself. My honors thesis on AIDS in the pediatric population won the Minnie Helen Hicks prize. I then went to Harvard Law School. During law school, I represented indigent defendants through the Harvard Defenders program, taught constitutional law at a nearby public high school and was a teaching assistant for an undergraduate ethics course.

After graduating cum laude, I spent four years as an Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Bureau of the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office. I initially did appellate work, but later prosecuted public corruption, insurance fraud and financial crimes. I also spent six months in the Lowell District Court as part of the Urban Violence Strike Force prosecuting primarily drug and domestic violence cases. I had the chance to work with a wonderful group of assistant district attorneys and dedicated police officers, including one cop who pursued a fleeing felon on a tricycle and caught him! As difficult as the work was, the days were exciting. Lowell District Court is still the scene of my most vivid legal memories, both successes and failures.

I went into private practice briefly at a large Boston law firm before quitting my legal career to try to write. I enrolled in several graduate seminars, participated in workshops on various aspects of writing, wrote lots of short stories and read constantly. Then one day on a vacation in Turks and Caicos, the idea for Misfortune came to me. I couldn't sleep and scribbled notes in a travel guide and on pages of my day planner. I completed the book about a year and a half later and, in the process, came to think of Frances Pratt as a real friend.

I recently moved from Cape Cod to Westchester County. My son and I live with our two Labrador Retrievers in a house built in 1790. It has crooked floors, uneven walls and a basement that fills with water every time it rains, but we love it. I am currently at work on my second novel to be completed this fall.