Shona Patel

I was born in 1959 and raised on a remote tea plantation in Assam, India. Tea culture was still very British colonial back then, and we lived in a massive bungalow with liveried servants and acres of rolling grounds surrounded by dense rain forests. There were leopards and wild elephants in our backyard! I have one older sister, and my parents, a quirky and free-spirited couple, brought us up without an ounce of discipline. I was an imaginative child, always trying to invent something. I made chewing gum from the sap of poinsettia plants, hatched baby lizards in a test tube and tended a tiny peanut farm, which did poorly as I periodically pulled up the plants to see if any peanuts were growing. The rest of the day, I climbed trees, stalked mynah birds with a homemade bow and arrows, and fished in tiny ponds with a bamboo pole and worms. My parents panicked when they found I was already ten and running around without a sum in my head so I was promptly packed off to boarding school like the other tea garden kids. In boarding school I got into all kinds of trouble for breaking rules and playing pranks on teachers. I flunked a year after selling my schoolbooks to buy samosas through the school janitor. Having survived boarding school I went on to college to graduate in English literature, and embarked upon by a long and exciting career in advertising and graphic design.

I came to America in 1994 after marrying my pen pal and ran my own graphic design business for several years. I launched a yoga t-shirt line, dabbled in ceramic art and sang with an award-winning chorus. Now I write full-time. My husband, Vinoo, and I live in Fountain Hills, Arizona. We are child-free and pet-free, although I did own a beta fish named Sashimi not so long ago who died of tottery old age. He is wrapped in sushi seaweed and buried in my backyard.

Books By Shona Patel

Teatime for the Firefly
SKU: 9780778315476
Flame Tree Road
SKU: 9780778316657