Abby Ripley is a seventy-eight-year-old and has had a very rich and varied life. She grew up on a ranch on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana and spent time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, a travel agent, a life insurance field agent, and an editor for Grolier Publishing. More recently she has exhibited as a fine art photographer specializing in composite images, a painter of watercolors and acrylics, a poet who has been named poetry finalist three successive years by Adelaide Literary Magazine, and a novelist with a historical novel in progress. She lives with her partner of forty-six years, three dogs, and a magical Calico cat in the countryside of Connecticut.