Jennifer Donnelly Biography and latest books by Jennifer Donnelly

Jennifer Donnelly was born in Port Chester, New York. She grew up to become a historical fiction author best-known for her novel A Northern Light (was published in the UK as A Gathering Light). She has also written books titled The Tea Rose and The Winter Rose, as well as Humble Pie, and a picture book for children. Her most recent work was a fiction titled Revolution that was published October 12, 2010.

Donnelly\'s grandparents fled from Dublin, Ireland to the Adirondack area in New York, and her grandmother worked at a hotel on Big Moose Lake, which was later used as the setting of Donnelly\'s novel A Northern Light. Donnelly\'s own childhood was spent both in Rye (in Westchester County, downstate) and Port Leyden (in Lewis County, upstate). Donnelly studied at the University of Rochester, majoring in English Literature and European History and graduating with distinction in English Literature. She later also went to the Birkbeck College at the University of London in England.

Donnelly moved back to New York, to Brooklyn, when she turned 25. After working for about 10 years, Donnelly published her first novel, The Tea Rose. The Tea Rose is the first book of a trilogy based in the 19th Century in London\'s East End, with ties to the story of Jack the Ripper. The second book, The Winter Rose, continues the tale, following the Finnegan family and related characters from London to Africa to the coast of Northern California. She is currently working on the third in the series, The Wild Rose, which will follow Willa and Seamie\'s story.

A Northern Light was her second published novel, which proved to be her biggest success till today. The novel for young adults is based around the infamous murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in the Adirondack Mountains in 1906. This case was earlier the basis for Theodore Dreiser\'s epic An American Tragedy as well as the film A Place in the Sun. In 2004, A Northern Light won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Carnegie Medal in the UK, as well as the 2004 Michael L. Printz Award as an honor book.

Her second young adult novel, Revolution, is a tale of two teenage girls—one in present-day Brooklyn and one in Paris during the French Revolution—whose stories interweave as they struggle to make sense of the tragedies they encounter. Revolution talks about the story of Andi Alpers, a gifted but troubled young girl living in Brooklyn Heights, who is coping to get over the death of her younger brother. The book also tells the story of Alexandrine Paradis, a poor actress in France who comes to the attention of the royal family at the most violent moment in their history. As the stories of Andi and Alexandrine intertwine, Revolution explores the ways people use to deal with loss, love, and the challenges of mental ill health. The book was named a Best Book of 2010 by Amazon.com, Kirkus Reviews and School Library Journal, and the audio book version of Revolution received a 2011 American Library Association Odyssey Honor.