Yael Politis

I grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, in the house on the cover of Book 3 of the Olivia series, not far from the location of Olivia's farm. While studying at the Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin, I spent two summers in Israel and ended up coming back to make my life here. Since then I've spent a lot of time traveling between the Middle East and the Midwest, loving both my homes. While living on Kibbutz Ein Tsurim I learned the story of the Etzion Bloc during the War of Independence -- from people who had lived through it. It was many years before I dared to try to put it down on paper. At that time, fantasies aside, I considered writing nothing more than a hobby. I did, however, post the beginning of The Lonely Tree on a writers' workshop run by the London Arts Council. There it won a Book of the Year award and Holland Park Press of London asked to see the complete manuscript. Not long afterward I received an email from them. "We want to publish your book." Hey, you never know when a fantasy is going to come true. For years I had been researching the backdrop for Olivia's story and based many of the details on letters and journals passed down through my family, over seven generations of lives lived in the American Midwest. I also received a great deal of information and insight from my sister Martha, who lived with her husband in a modern log home, hunted her own land, cut her own firewood, and was as independent and stubborn as Olivia. Then self-publishing happened. The prospect of being able to publish that story independently was a great motivator, and I finally completed and published the five books of the Olivia series.