My story starts with a childhood epiphany. It was 1968. I was thirteen, growing up in Wisconsin. Robins were literally falling out of trees, dying, from the neurotoxin DDT. I read marine biologist Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. My father, a practical conservationist who modeled a deep love of people and nature through his daily actions, acted on his convictions and sued the state of Wisconsin. My father and his friends prevailed; Wisconsin banned DDT in 1972 and the rest of the nation followed suit in 1973.

Out of this experience, I gained two heroes - my father in real life and Rachel Carson in the abstract - and a life goal, for I had become fascinated by Carson's writing. I decided that I, too, would become a marine biologist and share science by writing books for the general public to better understand our natural world.