STEPHANIE LOWDEN is a gardener, substitute teacher and amateur historian. She’s been writing since the age of 6 (her first manuscript was a note she left for her mother) and dabbling in history since college days. The theme of loss informs much of her fiction. This is assuredly because her father died when she was nine years old. Some years ago, Stephanie ran across a story, told by an Ojibwe elder, about a young girl who survived an entire winter alone after her family had all perished from smallpox. From this research Time of the Eagle was born. She is working on another historical fiction novel for the middle grades, a young adult fantasy, a picture book and a novel in the genre of women’s fiction.