Brenda Murphy is the author of more than twenty books. Recently she has been writing mainly historical fiction. Besides When Light Breaks Through: A Salem Witch Trials Story (2023), a hopeful, fact-based novel about the healing of Salem Village, her recent fiction includes Becoming Carlotta: A Biographical Novel (2018), based on the life of the notorious actress Carlotta Monterey, and After the Voyage: An Irish American Story (2016), based on the experience of her immigrant family in the Boston area from 1870 until the 1930s. After teaching at universities in New York and Connecticut, Brenda now lives in Maryland where she enjoys writing full time surrounded by deer and horse farms.