Mary's Bio
 Mary!.
I was born in Iowa, a farm state deep in the green heart of the United States. Growing up in the country in the 1960’s was awesome, but I hated school. I wanted to be scrambling around in the loft of our big red barn, searching through the hay bales for nests of new-born kittens. Or nailing boards into the trunks of linden trees so I could climb really high. Or having cow-manure fights with my cousins (the best pats were dry on the outside so you could pick them up and throw them, but still damp inside so they made a big satisfying mess when they hit somebody).
I remember an evening late one August, when the State Fair was over and the farmers were getting their giant corn-pickers ready to roll through the fields, my aunt from Omaha was visiting us. "You must get lonely way out here," she said to me. "I bet you're glad school's starting."
Huh?! I'd just spent that long, delicious summer day roaming the gravel roads on the old workhorses that belonged to my feisty little neighbour, Stormy. We'd been pinching green apples, and checking out ghosts in abandoned houses. Why would I want to trade that for endless hours penned up in one room? Why was I supposed to enjoy being with the other occupants of that room just because they were my age?
School Days
At school my stomach hurt so much that often I couldn’t eat the cafeteria lunch, because the popular girls loved forming little cliques that excluded first one person, then another. Too often that person was me! I hated how the kids who lived in town were considered better than us farm people. It wasn’t fair that the daughter of the banker and the son of the vet always got chosen for the best parts in the Christmas production. At least I wasn’t persecuted like one older, simple-minded and overweight girl. When she lumbered up the steps of the school bus, everybody would lift their feet to avoid getting her germs. I always felt guilty when I did that, but I wasn’t brave enough to stand up for her.
The Best Gift
 Mary at home
Yet, despite all the pain and frustration I felt in primary school, a wonderful thing did happen. I learned to read.
One winter afternoon in the third grade, our teacher led her best readers up the stairs of our old brick schoolhouse to a small, musty-smelling room that served as the elementary library. She handed each of us a “chapter book” that she thought we’d like. Mine was Charlotte’s Web.
In that overheated room we kids had to sit even closer to each other than usual, which made me squirm with discomfort. But as I read that most perfect of opening lines and beyond, I had my first experience of falling in love with a novel. It felt like I was floating away from the grubby, confusing world of school into a multi-coloured land where a runt of the litter would be treated fairly, a wise-cracking rat would make me laugh with his truthfulness, and a kind spider would know how to spin exactly the right word.
All these years later, it’s still one of my greatest delights to start reading a novel and to know, within the first few sentences, that this writer will transport me to a vivid land where I’ve never been before. And that is the gift I hope to give my readers.
My Life Now
Apart from writing, I have two other jobs: looking after my family and emergency teaching. I live in the Melbourne suburb of Oak Park with my husband, John, and our younger daughter, Anna, who is studying Psychology at Swinburne University. John says he’s afraid that when Anna earns her degree, “She’ll be able to suck the thoughts out of my brain.” I gave that fear to Ruby Clair’s dad, whose older daughter is determined to become a psychiatrist.
Most weeks, I teach a couple of days at Box Forest College, five minutes’ drive from my house. Some of the classes can be challenging, but I love spending time with real teenagers as well as the ones in my imagination.
Why I Came to Australia
A few months before I graduated from university, a representative from the Education Department of Victoria visited our campus. She was recruiting newly minted teachers for two-year stints. This was the opportunity of my dreams: I had never fitted in with small-town Iowa life. I wanted to travel!
And by travel I did not mean a two-week vacation to Yellowstone National Park. I longed to spend great chunks of time amongst people who looked different from me, who spoke other languages, whose lives had been shaped by experiences far from the midwest Bible Belt.
I found all that in Melbourne … as well as fantastic food and great coffee. Although I didn’t arrive intending to spend the rest of my life, I feel privileged to still be here. In the town where I went to school I often felt like an alien. Here, I’m at home.
Mary's Daughters (and co-authors!)
 Mary and Katie.  Anna and Andy. | 
