Born in 1970 in Chicago, Illinois, Andromeda Romano-Lax worked as a freelance journalist and travel writer before turning to fiction. Among her nonfiction works are several guidebooks to Alaska and Mexico, as well as a travel narrative, Searching for Steinbeck's Sea of Cortez. Her hobbies include playing the cello. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband and two children, and is at work on a second novel about Victorian-era archaeology, set in the Middle East.