My passion is to write the stories of ordinary women's extraordinary lives. I’ve written on the short life and lonely death of a New England mill operative Berengera Caswell, and of an early nineteenth-century mother, Mary Marshall Dyer, and her desperate campaign to retrieve her children who were living with the Shakers. I’ve written about gravestones, frogs, and 200-year-old hair.

My day job is professor of history and co-founder of the women’s and gender studies program at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. For almost 30 years, I’ve taught undergraduate courses in women’s history, in American culture, and on historical research and writing.

I am honored to have my books recognized with awards from the New England Historical Association, Northeast Popular Culture Association, the Communal Studies Association, ForeWord Magazine, and the Independent Publisher Book Awards. The real reward is in recovering one more life, remembering one more woman’s voice.

I make my life in southern Maine, with my husband, a rare book dealer.