Betty J. Vaughn taught art history and painting before tackling her first novel. Now working on her fourth, she is thrilled to have discovered another creative outlet in writing. A graduate of East Carolina University, Ms. Vaughn also attended the University of South Carolina, Spalding University, and studied at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy. Extensive travel, a love of history, and a lifetime of reading provide ample inspiration for fictional plots and likeable characters. The Civil War era is a period of particular interest for her having grown up hearing stories of her own ancestors who fought and died for their State. All three of her published novels are winners of the historical fiction award from the North Carolina Society of Historians due to the intensive research woven into the story of each novel.