Sharon Dean grew up in Chelmsford Massachusetts where she and her two siblings rode bikes, read books, and visited the historical sites made famous by the Pilgrims, the Revolutionaries, and the many famous writers of New England’s nineteenth century. From Massachusetts, it was a small leap to the University of  New Hampshire and a degree in English.

     When she returned to Chelmsford after graduation, Sharon discovered that she shouldn’t teach seventh  graders and that she should marry the man she dated in college. They spent a year in Del Rio, Texas, where  she had a more successful year teaching high school while her husband completed Air Force pilot training.  When he was assigned to Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire, she seized the opportunity to enter graduate school at UNH.

     Armed with a Ph.D. and facing a declining job market, Sharon spent several years laboring on the adjunct teaching circuit before she began a full-time career at Rivier University in Nashua, New Hampshire. She added the aura of the nineteenth century to her life when she and her husband purchased an 1865 farmhouse in nearby Brookline. Four academic books later, Sharon moved with her late husband to Ashland, Oregon. Embracing a change she never anticipated, Sharon is learning to bike and hike and garden in the Siskiyous instead of the Whites. She has sworn off books that require footnotes and is reinventing herself as a writer of mystery novels.