All African and Nevadan images by Elizabeth Cain from the actual settings of the novels are available as enlargements.
WELCOME TO MY WEBSITE!
Hello from the wild and beautiful state of Montana!
A few facts for new friends and new readers: I’m a native Californian who has called Montana home for 28 years! My CA education includes degrees from Alhambra High School, the University of Redlands, and the University of California at Berkeley where I earned a lifetime secondary teaching credential and taught for 31 years in Ventura County. In my spare time, I ran a small riding school in the lovely hills of Oak View and attended a weekly poetry workshop that published an annual anthology of judged entries, rivertalk, in which I was a prolific contributor. In 1990, my husband, Jerry, and I bought a ranch in Lincoln, Montana and spent the ensuing years riding our horses on the spectacular wilderness trails that begin at our back door, running a team or two of sled dogs in winter and skiing through miles of snowbound land. A common sight on these journeys were herds of elk and deer, a moose or two, coyotes, several wolves, foxes, a mountain lion, and always overhead, eagles, hawks, sandhill cranes, herons and Canada geese. In 2014 and 2016, the Montana election ballot bore my name, when I ran for House District 80 Representative. I rode my horse around city streets with a sign on my back stating: RIDING FOR YOUR RIGHTS, but it was not enough to defeat the incumbent the first time or the new Republican woman the second time! It was a great experience, however. In addition to my passion for writing, my other interests include singing, playing flute and piano, running (knees permitting), painting (watercolor) and riding my one remaining horse, after moving here with ten. Gringo (Arab/Belgian cross) is a Grand Prix dressage horse who is also very competent on the trail and is pictured here and on the cover of Almost Paradise cantering for me without a bridle.
If you are here with me for the first time, let me promise you my work is not of comfortably familiar genres or darkly quirky themes beyond the point of reason, but I’m not afraid to mine the depths of human relationships or honor our brilliantly diverse world. My characters are gay, straight, or “trying to figure themselves out”; Catholic, atheist, and “Oh god, spare me the dogma”; black, white, American Indian, Mexican, Guatemalan; literate and mute; self-assured and mentally challenged; some with violent minds, most with healing hearts; skeptics and believers; militants and pacifists, but sorry – no vegetarians.
I live with my characters day and night and hope to reveal them to you as gifts for a dreary day or stars in a sleepless night.
