Crescent Varrone

Crescent Varrone is a native New Yorker and long-time resident of Scandinavia. Fluent in Danish and a graduate of Williams College and Cambridge University, Crescent earned a Fulbright Scholarship in 1985. The author is married to a Dane, and the couple lives in Denmark with their three children.

By day, Crescent serves as Chief Strategist for Vestas Wind Systems, the largest producer of wind power plants in the world.

"Shadows in Summer" began as an attempt to make sense of real-life events. One day at Starbucks, on the proverbial napkin, I drew a series of "dimensions" - each one was a way of looking at the two-year run of coincidences in my life. One was psychiatry - one was religion - one was the paranormal - one was New Age - and so forth. I remarked to my coffee-mate that it would make a great novel.

The vision of the book was first-person multiple narration from the start. At first I tried something like "Under Milk Wood" - I adore Dylan Thomas - but this proved too disconnected for a novel. Barbara Kingsolver's magnificent "The Poisonwood Bible" provided me a contemporary model, and I hope my work emulates her superb technique.

The writing of the first draft in Summer 2005 was cathartic for me, but I was genuinely surprised when the first-round readers told me they wanted to hear more. The momentum grew, and five drafts later, "Shadows in Summer" was published direct-to-Amazon on Dec 22, 2009.