A native of San Francisco, I attended San Francisco State University, where I studied biology and physics. Upon graduation, I became a high school science teacher. What made my teaching experience unusual was that more than forty languages were spoken among the students in my school. That provided me with one of the most important opportunities of my career. I chose to teach at least two general science classes each year to rooms filled with newly arrived immigrants, an extraordinary experience that changed my view of humanity.

     After retiring from teaching, I decided to study history, philosophy, and religion to prepare myself for serious writing. Gradually, those seemingly disparate subjects coalesced into a coherent whole, revealing to me how artificial the boundaries between disciplines can be.

     That more holistic perspective worked its way into my first novel, In the the Shadow of an Irish God, which won First Place in the Maxie Awards. It continues to inform my fiction, including Young Minds Awaken, in which young people confront some of the oldest and most difficult questions human beings have ever asked.