Candace E. Salima was born right smack dab in the middle of twelve children. In a family comprised of his, mine and ours, Candace can barely remember a time when reading wasn’t an integral part of her life. Her love of books, reading and writing, was born of hearing her mother read nightly from the James Herriot series about a veterinarian’s mishaps in the British countryside. She thrived in a family of readers, began writing original stories at the age of eleven and has never looked back.

The daughter of a father who survived the invasion of Hitler’s war machine in his homeland and a mother who is an often controversial conservative columnist, Candace spent her childhood on the back of a horse or trudging through the mountains and valleys of the American west. Born in California, she lived in Nebraska, Montana, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico . . . all before she was twelve- years-old.

She met her sweetheart at Brigham Young University in 1983. Ten years later she appeared on the Phil Donahue Show in defense of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints, which precipitated a reunion with him. In 1995, Alvin and Candace were married in the Bountiful Temple and settled in Utah Valley.

In the course of her life, Candace has been a reporter, a writer of health booklets, a screenwriter, and a teacher. Her philosophy in life is simple . . . everything can be turned into a good story. Hence her nine day rafting trip down the Colorado River, hiking the Colorado Rockies, or horseback riding in the northern Wyoming Grand Teton mountains. A love of BYU football, basketball, swimming, movies, plays, concerts and socializing with family and friends round out her life. All this, and she still prefers to be curled up on her couch with a good book, a cup of hot chocolate and a blustery Winnie-the-Pooh day brewing outside.

Candace writes fast paced romantic suspense tastefully intertwined with the LDS faith. Whether the medium be film or the written word, her skill in pulling the reader into the middle of the story will launch you on a breathless journey through the pages of her stories. In her books, she pulls from the richness of the west, with all its heart wrenching beauty and the values, as well as the rich personalities of the people.