Madelene Ferguson Allen was a geographer, teacher and writer who lived in Ontario, Canada. She travelled widely, spending considerable time in the sub-Antarctic islands, researching for this book and for another book about a famous shipwreck that will be published by Exisle in 2006. An earlier book, Reunion: Search for my Birth Family first brought her to the south Pacific. Madelene was married with two children. She died in 2003.