Mara Leveritt was born in Chicago and raised in Denver, but has lived in Arkansas for the past 30 years.  She worked at the Arkansas Democrat and the Arkansas Gazette before becoming a weekly columnist and senior editor at the Arkansas Times.  In 1996, she left full-time newspaper work to write The Boys on the Tracks, which was published by St. martin's Press in 1999.  Kirkus called the book "a wrecking-ball tale of tragedy, malfeasance, and machine politics," and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette said it "lures you in and holds you hostage until the end."  In 2000,  The Boys on the Tracks, was awarded Booker Worthen Prize by the Central Arkansas Library System.  Leveritt, who remains a contributing editor to the Arkansas Times, is presently as work on a new book that explores a triple murder in West Memphis.   Her webpage is located at http://www.maraleveritt.com/