Judy Endicott Manzone lives in the quiet town of Indianola, Washington with her husband Joe and her two beloved cats. However, her own life is anything but quiet, colored as it is by an active beekeeping practice, frequent forays into the wilds of the West, and an avid pursuit of writing, a more recent passion which gave birth to her first book, Family Honey: Five Generations of Beekeeping, published by Arrow Publications and available on Amazon.
In her youth, she spent most of her summers in the remote, untamed terrain of Poker Flat, California, where her family had once staked a claim for gold in this area haunted by the long-gone gilded dreams of ’49ers who once prospected in this land. Foregoing hotels, hot showers, and fresh vegetables for the stripped-down simplicity of camp life, Judy learned from a young age to be on guard against Mother Nature’s predators: the cougars, the rattlesnakes and the bears, not to mention thieving pack rats and their affinity for shiny objects. These campouts provided a stark reminder the 19th century gold miners had to endure, a motif that has surfaced in her writing.
The rugged beauty of Poker Flat stayed with her throughout the years, and later she relived these memorable moments with three children and two grandchildren, indulging in the conventional leisure of a Disneyland vacation only once.
Eventually, her vivid imagination and jovial wit crystallized these experiences onto the page, and she drew on them to write exciting, dramatic mysteries (for which her bad taste in men also provided abundant material.) At the same time, her career in travel gave her added insight into human nature. She recently released her first mystery, Murder in Poker Flat, the introductory novel in a series starring Parke Robinson, ace detective.
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