Taylor Rickard has an unusual background. She was raised in the south by a grandmother whose love of Southern history and traditions was instilled in her from an early age. Her grandmother’s dreams for her life included being presented at the St. Cecilia’s Cotillion, marriage to a nice boy from the Citadel, and a life of doing research for the Huguenot Society of South Carolina and raising lovely little Children of the Confederacy. That didn’t happen. She grew up to have multiple careers in her life.

She has been a chef, a television producer/director and an information technology architect. But it was that love and knowledge of all things southern that lead her and her partner, T. Novan to begin what would become a saga that follows the lives of a family through the end of the Civil War, the pain of the Reconstruction, and the extravagance of the Gilded Age – so far!

She now lives with her partner on a small farm in rural Kentucky, raising their oldest grandson, working her day job, writing at night, and feeding her family and friends from her extraordinary collection of traditional recipes from around the world.