Born among the hills of Vermont in 1959, John Francis Pike now divides his time between his ancestral home and New Orleans, Louisiana. Retired from his previous profession, he devotes much of his time to writing and to the study of history, folklore, Freemasonry, and various esoteric traditions. His fiction reflects these interests, often exploring the ways in which the past persists into the present, through old houses and old families, inherited obligations, half-forgotten histories and mysteries that resist ordinary explanation.