LINDA CARDILLO is an award-winning author of twelve works of historical fiction and romance. She writes about the old country and the new, the tangle and embrace of family, and finding courage in the midst of loss.From the time she was in high school, Linda held in her heart the dream of writing the Great American Novel. But she was also brought up to know that she had to be “practical” and make a living. After graduating from college, she found a job as a secretary at a venerable Boston publishing house (barely passing the typing test). Within a year she had moved into an editorial position for college textbooks in the sciences and social sciences. It still wasn’t the Great American Novel, but she got to immerse herself in American intellectual and social history.After earning her MBA from Harvard Business School—where she wrote comedy for the annual student musical and performed in a platinum blonde wig while seven months pregnant—she got divorced and gave birth. She then became circulation manager for the launch of Inc. magazine and got a crash course in magazine marketing. Unfortunately, she also crashed head-on into her boss and got fired a year after the magazine’s successful start. Around this time she got an invitation to her tenth college reunion, signed up to attend and fell in love with a man she hadn’t seen since freshman year. On an excursion to a zoo, her son got carsick and threw up. This wonderful man calmly got him out of the car, cleaned him up and took him for a walk in the fresh air, and she knew she had a keeper.Linda and the keeper moved to Germany for a few years with their children. While living in Europe, she received an unexpected gift of love letters that became the seeds for her first novel, Dancing on Sunday Afternoons. Linda has been married for almost forty years to the keeper, a brilliant scientist and sailor, and is the mother of three children of whom she is enormously proud. She loves to cook and is happiest when the twelve chairs around her dining room table are filled with people enjoying her food. She speaks four languages, some better than others. She tries to play the piano every night—sometimes by herself and sometimes in an improvisational duet with her younger son. She does The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle in ink, a practice she learned from her mother. From her mother she also absorbed a love of opera, especially those of Puccini and Verdi, whose music filled her home when she was a child. She once climbed Mt. Kenya and has very curly hair. Linda and the keeper live in Western Massachusetts.AWARDS AND HONORSDancing on Sunday Afternoons—Maggie Award for Long FictionThe Boat House Café—Goethe Award for 20th-Century Historical Fiction, First PlaceThe Uneven Road—BookLife Prize, Semi Finalist Love That Moves the Sun—NYC Big Book Award, Winner in Historical Fiction; Foreword Indies Book of the Year, Finalist; Chaucer Award for Historical Fiction, Finalist Visit Linda’s website at https://lindacardillo.com/; follow her on Facebook at Linda Cardillo, Author; or write to her at linda@lindacardillo.com.Read more about this authorRead less about this author