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Mary Doria Russell was born in suburban Chicago in 1950. Her mother was a Navy nurse and her father was a Marine Corps drill sergeant. She and her younger brother, Richard, consequently developed a dismaying vocabulary at an early age. She learned discretion at Sacred Heart Catholic elementary school; how to diagram sentences at Glenbard East High; cultural anthropology at the University of Illinois; social anthropology at Northeastern University in Boston; and biological anthropology at the University of Michigan.
Mary and Don Russell have been happily married for an unusually high percentage of the years since 1970. Don is a software engineer and one of the founders of AllTech Medical Systems, which designs and manufactures medical imaging equipment for the Chinese domestic market. They have one adult son, Daniel. They live in Cleveland.
From the author's website
Mary Doria Russell's website
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I am a big fan of your novels. What took so long for a new one?
I've become a dues-paying member of the sandwich generation while writing
this book. Like many Baby Boomers, I'm helping elderly and infirm relatives
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drive, starting to date, getting his heart broken, applying for summer jobs
and college. My own health did a power-dive, and that episode took a two-year
chunk out of my life. Thank God, my husband has been healthy all this time, so
the household has run fairly smoothly!
Even without all that, A Thread of Grace would have been a bear. None of
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