Donna Lee Dicksson was born in Idaho and raised in western Montana. She spent a career as an engineer, then turned the same patience she used on circuits toward archives, circus routes, and family stories that had been left half-told.

She writes biographies and historical novels because the record is rarely fair. The Forgotten Georgia Wonder grew from a name in her own bloodline. Pet Lions & Well-Dressed Elephants follows a real animal trainer and a real wardrobe mistress through the nineteenth-century circus. The Wardrobe Mistress continues that work.

She is not trying to polish the past. She wants readers to meet the people who lived it — stubborn, gifted, ordinary, and easy to miss.

Donna lives in Garland, Texas, with her husband, Peter and African Grey Parrot. She is a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and avid photographer. The wish she carried as a little girl is still the job: help people understand one another.