the author


Rosina Lippi is a former academic and tenured university professor. Since 2000 she has been writing and researching, haunting the intersection where history and storytelling meet. She does this by wallowing in 19th century newspapers, magazines and and street maps and consuming a lot of academic historical research. And she never gets bored with any of it.

Most writers of historical fiction are obsessive-compulsive. That’s her story and she’s sticking to it.

As Sara Donati she is the author of the Wilderness series, six historical novels that follow the fortunes of a group of families living in the vast forests in upstate New York from about 1792-1825, with particular attention to the War of 1812. Her newest series about the extended Bonner family  — The Gilded Hour — was published in 2016.  The story  jumps ahead two generations to follow Nathaniel and Elizabeth Bonner’s grand- and great granddaughters into the twentieth century.  The second in the series, Where the Light Enters, came out in October 2019.

Jimmy Dean, pupper of the Havanese variety

Rosina writes contemporary novels (and academic work, for example here). The majority of her book reviews can be found at Goodreads; you can also find her on Facebook and (less often) Twitter (@RosinaLippi). She lives on Puget Sound with her husband, daughter, a rambunctious dog and murderous cat.

Sara lives with Rosina and her family, but refuses to answer the phone, do windows or make herself useful in any way at all.