Her nonfiction has been published widely, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Elle, Travel & Leisure, and Vanity Fair. She is the granddaughter of Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award winning writer Sidney Howard, who adapted Gone with the Wind for the screen.

The fascination with the mysterious world of the Shakers stems from the many summers Rachel spent as a child in her New England family house, once a Meeting House of a community of Shakers - the same house her grandfather Sidney had bought for his family a century before. Rachel has been working at this novel for seven years. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.

Photo by Sarah Shatz

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