Bio:
I grew up in Long Branch, New Jersey, about the same time that poet Robert Pinsky and cartoonist and author Mark Alan Stamaty did. One summer when I was little and had whooping cough (that was before the vaccine), my mother let me play for hours on an isolated beach. I thought that the ocean made me well, and I still sit by the ocean every chance I get.

I earned my first money as a writer when I was a Long Branch High School correspondent to the Asbury Park Press.  They paid me 10 cents per column inch. Thirty years later, when I got serious about writing, I was a legislative attorney living in Bethesda, Maryland, and drafting bills to send to Congress on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education and the president.

My first magazine article—for Cobblestone—was about the Makah People (www.makah.com) in the Pacific Northwest. Dozens of articles later I finally wised up and moved to Portland, Oregon. By then I had written most of my ten history books (http://www.ruthtenzerfeldman.com/nonfiction-books.html) for children and young adults. I'm passionate about history and about words—so it was a good match.

I also like to stretch the truth. Embellish. Lie. Yes, I admit this. I credit this tendency to my Polish-Hungarian grandmother who made soup out of chicken feet and enthralled me with folk tales from Eastern Europe. I regaled her with my own stories back then. I made up imaginary friends and enemies, and I still do. Only now I call them characters

One caravan of characters turned into Blue Thread, a time-travel novel about women's rights. When an ancient prayer shawl takes 16-year-old Miriam Josefsohn from the woman suffrage campaign in 1912 Oregon to a struggle for land in the biblical Middle East, who decides how much justice is enough?

Imagine how I felt when Blue Thread won the Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature at the 2013 Oregon Book Awards. I was totally verklempt (meaning, in Yiddish, that my heart was full to bursting). By then I was writing The Ninth Day, a companion novel that transports Miriam Hope Friis from Berkeley, California, during the 1964 free speech protest, to medieval Paris, at the time of the First Crusade. Hope struggles to find her own voice despite a profound stutter. And she discovers that she might be able to save a baby's life only if she is willing to destroy someone else's.

Two characters from Blue Thread have found their way into The Ninth Day. In the new book, I never do tell you what happens to Miriam Josefsohn, which apparently has infuriated a minor character in Blue Thread. Her name was/is(?) Florrie Steinbacher, and she managed to take over the Blue Thread blog this past summer to tell reveal the rest of Miriam's tale. You have to watch out for these figments of your imagination. They can take on a life of their own. Thankfully I have an excellent writer's critique group Viva Scriva, who helps me keep my balance.

As far as I know, no other characters are planning to impede your contacting me directly through my website, Facebook, and Twitter. I'm not much of a social media person, I'll tell you that up front. But write to me and I'll write back. My work-in-progress involves Portland in 2059, Istanbul in the 1500s, and earthquakes. I don't think Florrie or any of my characters from previous books will mind. Still…you never know.


The Ninth Day

In this companion novel following the Oregon Book Award-winning Blue Thread, Ruth Tenzer Feldman once again weaves a tale full of history, culture, and fantasy. Hope Friis has struggled with a severe stutter her entire life. As the 1960s Free Speech Movement gains ground in her hometown of Berkeley, California, Hope embarks on a journey back in time—guided by her time-traveling ancestor, Serakh—to the city of Paris, circa 1099 A.D. Her mission: to save the newborn son of the young woman, Dolcette, and find the courage to become a young woman of strength and conviction.