Melanie Benjamin is the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling historical novels The Swans of Fifth Avenue, about Truman Capote and his society swans, The Aviator’s Wife, a novel about Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and Mistress of the Ritz, based on the true story of the American woman who ran the Ritz during World War II, catering to the Nazi occupiers by day while working for the Resistance by night. Her most recent novel prior to California Golden was The Children’s Blizzard, a gripping tale of survival and forgiveness amidst a devastating, real-life blizzard that hit the Great Plains on the afternoon of January 12, 1888.