Margaret Dardess

Born and raised just outside of New York City, Margaret has lived and travelled across several continents, landing at last in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where she should have been all along.  She is the daughter of an artist and a poet, who were determined to steer their only daughter away from a life in the arts. For many years they succeeded.

After graduating from Connecticut College, Margaret returned to New York to study history at Columbia University, and after a brief teaching career, went on to tackle the law.  When she finally stopped going to school, she set off on a journey, masquerading as an international trade lawyer, a corporate executive and a university administrator until at last she cast her parents’ warnings to the wind and began to write.
Most recently, she has turned to writing children's books, beginning with Bowers and Shady, a middle-grade novel about the adventures of a thirteen-year-old Iowa farm boy and an orphaned Irish girl  after the American Civil war.

Bowers and Shady has elements of a suspenseful thriller that she learned writing her first book, Brutal Silence, published in 2017 in connection with her advocacy work combatting human trafficking.