Jennifer Donnelly

Jennifer Donnelly is an American young adult fiction author. She is well known for her writing skills, and her most renowned novel is A Northern Light (renamed A Gathering Light in the UK). She is currently living in Hudson Valley in New York with her daughter, husband and their grey hound.

Early Life

Jennifer Donnelly was born on August the 16 in 1963, Port Chester in New York. Her grandparents had migrated there from Dublin, Ireland, where her grandmother found work at a hotel on Bog Moose Lake, which is the setting for A Gathering Light.

Writing Career

At the age of 35, Jennifer Donnelly released her first novel, the first part of a trilogy, The Tea Rose, which is based in London's East End in the 19th century. It ties in the the story of Jack the Ripper, an active serial killer in the East End during the 1880's. The Winter Rose (the second book in the trilogy), follows the main characters from London to Africa and finally to Northern California. The third book, The Wild Rose, begins near the very beginning of WW1, follows the characters from London to Arabia.

A Northern Light was her second published novel, which was loosely based on the murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in 1906,

Her 3rd book is titled Revolution, and is an interconnecting story between two girls, one living in modern day Brooklyn, and the other in France during the French Revolution. It's about how their stories connect while they struggle to make sense of the tragedies they encounter.