Karen can trace the descendants of all four of her grandparents to having settled in Otsego County over two hundred years ago. Through genealogical studies, she developed an interest in the more personal aspects of rural day to day life in the 19th century. She lives in a former one room schoolhouse on a hilltop with her husband, daughter, two cats, and a dog with entitlement issues. She continues to search for little known narratives of regular people from the past and is working on her next book about the darker side of central New York in the 1800s.