Bio

Laurie Calkhoven has always been fascinated by history, and especially by the ordinary people who got caught up in extraordinary moments in history. She likes the small moments and bizarre facts that mostly get left out by the serious history books — like whether or not a broken egg kept the American Revolution on track, and how putting your hands in your pockets and jiggling change could lead to an arrest in Nazi-occupied France.

While she was researching her biography of George Washington, she started to wondering about life during the Siege of Boston. Soon, a character named Daniel was whispering in her ear, telling her about his secret work for General George Washington, and she wrote the novel Daniel at the Siege of Boston, 1776. A biography of Harriet Tubman led to a second novel in her Boys of Wartime series — Will at the Battle of Gettysburg, 1863. Her third historical novel, Michael at the Invasion of France, 1943 rounds out the series.

When she's not writing historical books, Calkhoven is at work on nonfiction books like I Grew Up to Be President and contemporary novels for American Girl's Innerstar University series!