Fifty years as a curious daughter helped fuel her quest to unearth a past her father kept hidden. Tenacity and a refusal to accept his determination to keep her out sustained her pursuit but above all her need to know his past was driven by her need to know who she was, her identity. The urge to write perhaps stems from her Irish roots. Her curiosity about people, their backgrounds and how these shape them was nurtured by 40 years of living and working in one of the most diverse cities in the world – Toronto, Canada. Short stints in Zambia and El Salvador sharpened her perceptions. More recently, eleven years living in rural Ontario provided the time to think and write.

Her ten-year journey into her father’s pain-filled past extracted a heavy toll on both of them, worth it in the end by the knowledge and love that deepened between them. The award-winning Dancing with my Father is their story.

The author and her husband now live in Canada’s capital, Ottawa.