I was born in St. Louis, stud­ied Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty and law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan. I was Chief of the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s Orga­nized Crime Strike Force in Brook­lyn, where I pros­e­cut­ed high-rank­ing mem­bers of La Cosa Nos­tra. After twen­ty years as a lit­i­ga­tor, I earned an MFA in cre­ative writ­ing from Fair­field University.