Valerie Martin is the author of two collections of short fiction and seven novels, including Italian Fever, The Great Divorce, and Mary Reilly. Her most recent novel, Property, is set in the surreal heat of the antebellum South during a slave rebellion, and takes the form of a dramatic monologue, bringing to the page a voice rarely heard in American fiction: the voice of a woman slave holder.
She is also the author of Salvation, which takes a unique approach to biography by entering directly into the world of the most beloved of all Christian saints, St. Francis of Assisi.
Martin resides in upstate New York.