Marie Herbert was brought up in Sri Lanka, went to school in India and then attended the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She has spent two years teaching English and Drama in London, five years as a researcher in advertising and public relations companies and also trained and worked as a transformational therapist.She is married to the polar explorer, writer and artist, Wally Herbert, and has accompanied him (with their two daughters) on many journeys. These included living amongst the Inuit (the Polar Eskimos) of NW Greenland and the Saami (Lapps) in Norway and Sweden, as well as taking her young family on trips to Greenland. Her previous books, The Snow People and The Reindeer People were accounts of her experiences in the Arctic and her novel Winter of the White Seal, was set in the southern Polar regions.