Beverly Cooper Pierce has been an academic librarian, registered nurse in the field of holistic care, family historian, and professional writer, all braiding now into her debut novel, The Rowans. Growing up in Salem, Massachusetts, she had no idea that John and Elizabeth Proctor, both convicted of witchcraft in 1692, were her seven-times great-grandparents, or that some of the oldest houses in towns along the coast held stories of her father's family. After living in Minnesota many years and bringing two sons into the next generation, she now lives and writes north of Boston on Cape Ann, where the bones of her novel are familial and real. She is at work on a sequel set in Maine.