When Wendy was about eleven years old, her school librarian recommended that she read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle. It changed her life. After she was finished reading that book, which remains among her favorites to this day, something just clicked. She knew what she was meant to do with her life—write novels like that one. It was more than a wish; it felt as though she had found her calling.

She settled into writing as a career after college, working for several local and national publications, and now she is finally doing what she has dreamed of since she read that book so long ago.

Wendy was born and raised in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. She graduated from the University of Minnesota, where she majored in political science and minored in French and history. After college, she spent some time living in France with two lifelong friends, and when she returned to the States, she was fortunate enough to get an internship with a congressman in Washington, D.C., and later a job with a Minnesota senator.

When she moved back to Minnesota, Wendy got her first writing job with City Pages, an arts and entertainment weekly in Minneapolis. She has been a journalist ever since, writing for national and local magazines and newspapers. Currently, she is editor-in-chief of Duluth Superior Magazine, a lifestyle monthly based in Duluth, Minnesota.

Even though she loved her career as a journalist, she never forgot her dream of being a novelist. Finding the time to write a novel—that was the hard part. What with making a living and taking care of a young son, she just couldn't find the luxury of spending time devoted to a dream. But finally, when her son Ben was in school and she was working from home as a freelance journalist, she realized she actually had the time to start writing her first novel. And she never looked back.

Wendy divides her time between homes in Duluth and Minneapolis, and a cabin on the Gunflint Trail, which is on the border of Minnesota and Canada. She lives with her spouse, editorial photographer Steve Burmeister, and their Alaskan Malamute, Molly. Her son Ben is in college, where he is undoubtedly the most handsome and charming boy on campus.

The Fate of Mercy Alban (Paperback)

By Wendy Webb

$15.99

ISBN-13: 9781401341930
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Voice, 2/2013

Other Editions of this Title

Grace Alban has spent more than twenty years avoiding her childhood home, the stately Alban House on the shores of Lake Superior, for reasons she would rather forget. But when her mother’s unexpected death brings Grace and her teenage daughter back, she finds more is haunting the halls and passageways of Alban House than her own personal demons.

Long-buried family secrets, a packet of old love letters, and a lost manuscript plunge Grace into a decades-old mystery about a scandalous party at Alban House, when a world-famous author took his own life and Grace’s aunt disappeared without a trace. The night has been shrouded in secrecy by the powerful Alban family for all of these years. Her mother intended to tell the truth about that night to a reporter on the very day she died—could it have been murder? Or was she a victim of the supposed Alban curse? Grace soon realizes her family secrets tangle and twist as darkly as the mansion’s secret passages.

With the help of the disarmingly kind—and attractive—Reverend Matthew Parker, Grace must uncover the truth about her home and its curse before she and her daughter become the next victims.

Wendy Webb is the author of The Tale of Halcyon Crane, the 2011 winner of the Minnesota Book Award for genre fiction, an Indie Next Pick from the Independent Booksellers Association, a Midwest Connections Pick from the Midwest Booksellers Association, and a Great Lakes, Great Reads Pick from the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association. She lives in Duluth, Minnesota.

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