I was born and raised in New York City.  My father, a stock specialist on Wall Street, and my mother, a photographer, lived in two very different worlds.  He surrounded himself with others in the financial world, summered in Southampton, taught us to play tennis, and voted Republican.  My mother filled our home with creative people and lively conversations, pulled us out of school to go to film festivals and museums, and had taken us all over Europe by the time we had graduated from high school.  My sister and I shuffled back and forth between our two families. 

I graduated from Brown University (’87) and Harvard Law School (’90), and then worked as an Assistant Attorney General in Massachusetts.  I did criminal appeals, spent six months on the Urban Violence Strike Force, served on the Massachusetts Domestic Violence Council, and then worked in a trial unit, prosecuting public corruption and economic crimes.  After leaving the public sector, I was a litigation associate at a private firm in Boston.

As much as I love the law, I always dreamed of writing, of having the freedom to create an entire story from imagination, of seeing a book with my name on the cover.  At a weekend writing workshop that I took in 1998, Joyce Carol Oates pulled me aside and told me it was “time to swim the English Channel and write a novel.”  I spent a year writing Misfortune , which Warner Books published in 2000.  I then wroteRedemption (2003), Regrets Only (2004), and Being Mrs. Alcott (2005), which was the Editors’ Pick at bn.com for fiction and literature the month of its release.  I was proud to receive the Washington Irving Award for Adult Fiction from the Westchester Library Association in 2005 and again 2007.  My novels have been published throughout Europe. 

In 2006, I formed a law partnership with my husband, Gordon Walker.  Walker & Geary has offices in Boston and Westchester, NY, and represents clients in litigation and arbitration matters.  More information can be found at www.WalkerGeary.com.

Over the years, I’ve taught creative writing to adults and children, and lectured extensively.  I was an adjunct professor at the Roger Williams School of Law and taught a seminar on Law and Literature.  As a volunteer, I serve on the board of Horizons, an organization that provides academic, cultural, and athletic opportunities to low-income children from Stamford and Norwalk, CT, and am a warden at St. Francis Episcopal Church in North Stamford. 

I live with my family in South Salem, NY.