The Empty Kingdom (22 page)

A year later, Elizabeth enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania to pursue a graduate degree in folklore and folklife. She completed
The Winter Prince
while working on her PhD, and continued bell-ringing at Philadelphia’s Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. She met her future husband, Tim Gatland, at a bell-ringers’ dinner-dance in Philadelphia; he was working in the US at the time, but was based in England. In the early stages of their relationship, there was a lot of back-and-forth across the Atlantic!

In 1995, a year after completing her PhD, Elizabeth moved to England to be with Tim. They were married in Pennsylvania on New Year’s Day in 1996.

Tim introduced Elizabeth to a new and unusual interest: flying small planes. During the five years that they lived in southern England, Elizabeth was content to go along as a passenger, but their dream was (and still is) to make a trip across North America, a journey they both felt would require two pilots. Elizabeth’s flying lessons were scheduled for the summer of 1997. They didn’t happen—instead, their daughter, Sara, was born. A son, Mark, followed in 2000. At the same time, the family moved to Scotland for Tim’s work.

Elizabeth sold her second book,
A Coalition of Lions
, in 2002. The children were old enough to go to day care now and then, and Elizabeth started taking those flying lessons. She earned her private pilot’s license in 2003, exactly one hundred years after the Wright Brothers made the world’s first powered-aircraft flight.

Elizabeth and her family have lived in Scotland ever since, and all but the first of her published novels were written there.
A Coalition of Lions
continues the Arthurian story that began with
The Winter Prince
, but moves the action from post-Roman Britain to a sixth-century African kingdom called Aksum (modern-day Ethiopia and Yemen).
The Sunbird
takes the tale to the next generation, featuring the young hero Telemakos, Arthur’s half-British, half-Aksumite grandson.

Telemakos’s story continues in the duology known as the Mark of Solomon. Part one,
The Lion Hunter
, was short-listed for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America’s Andre Norton Award for best young adult fantasy in 2008. Part two,
The Empty Kingdom,
was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Continuing Series title in 2008. Together, these five Arthurian-Aksumite books are known as the Lion Hunters novels.

Though she has been a published author since 1993, with both novels and short stories to her name, Elizabeth’s career took off with the 2012 publication of
Code Name Verity
. The runaway word-of-mouth (and online) success of this young-adult historical novel set in occupied France during World War II took everyone by surprise, not least Elizabeth herself. The book has been nominated and shortlisted for over twenty awards in the US and the UK. In addition to making the short lists for the 2013 Carnegie Medal and the 2012 Scottish Children’s Book Award, it is an honor book for both the 2013 Printz Award and the 2012 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. It was named to over thirty best-of lists for 2012 and 2013, including the New York Times’ Notable Children’s Books of 2012, and was winner of the 2013 Edgar Award for children’s literature. The book has also been included on a number of international award lists, notably the United States Board on Books for Young People’s Outstanding International Books of 2013 and the White Ravens 2013 (chosen by the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany). With each of these accolades,
Code Name Verity
represents Great Britain—a real honor for Elizabeth, who has lived long enough in Scotland that she officially qualifies as a Scottish author.

Elizabeth’s most recent book is
Rose Under Fire.
Though her ties to Pennsylvania remain strong, Elizabeth has no plans to leave Scotland anytime soon.

Four-year-old Elizabeth (atop the stroller) with her mother, Carol, and brother, Jared, in London in 1968.

Six-year-old Elizabeth at Barnegat Light, New Jersey, in July 1970.

Elizabeth (left, sitting on wall) and her father (right), with the neighbors’ children at Elizabeth’s childhood home in Kingston, Jamaica, in November 1971.

Elizabeth (middle) at a children’s garden party at her house in Jamaica in August 1972.

Elizabeth, in local school uniform, with her grandfather, painting the front gate at their house in Jamaica in 1971.

A typical day’s outing for the Wein family in Jamaica in 1972, in their Vauxhall Victor. Elizabeth (left) is in her bathing suit, wedged between the car seats and the window, pictured with her baby sister, Maria, (middle), and her mother’s best friend’s son, Carlton (right).

Studying in the Lower School Library at Harrisburg Academy in 1982.

Christmas festivities at the University of Pennsylvania while Elizabeth was in grad school there, circa 1990. She played the Lady in the Mummers’ Play.

Tim and Elizabeth on their tenth wedding anniversary in New Jersey in 2006.