Karen E. Black

Karen E. Black still lives mostly in Toronto, Canada surrounded by her family. Black's coming-of-age novel "From the Chrysalis" about Devereux cousins Dace and Liza begged for a sequel, so she wrote "Feeling for the Air." This second novel focused on Dace's escape from a corrupt penitentiary system and the cousins' dual mission to clear his name and find out where the Canadian monarch butterflies really made their winter home.

"Take to the Sky," the final novel in this trilogy, is not only a sweeping saga of the life that Dace and Liza Devereux dared to dream and hope for their large family, but of the monarch butterflies in Toronto, Canada and Michoacán, Mexico so many people have fought to save.

In January 2016, Karen Black finally visited Michoacán, Mexico herself and saw the monarchs' wintering grounds. At the El Rosario colony, high up in the rugged forested mountains, millions of monarchs colored the oyamel trees orange and bent their branches under their collective weight. Black's timing seemed perfect. She could still get on a horse. Also, the monarchs, long threatened by illegal logging, the use of pesticides and the eradication of milkweed, had made a big comeback. Six weeks later, at least 1.5 million monarch butterflies were hit with a deadly freeze during an unusual ice and wind storm. The storm hit the colony just as the spring migration to Canada was beginning. Luckily, many butterflies had exited the mountains before the unexpected freeze.

Black did her Master's in Library Science at the University of Toronto and completed several certificates at the Institute for Genealogical Studies. but she did her undergraduate degree in sociology at the University of Western Ontario. Though Black's first love will always be English literature, she is still grateful for the insight she gained into social problems, human social relationships and institutions when she studied sociology.