About Ayelet Waldman

Ayelet Waldman is an Israeli-American novelist and essayist. She has written seven mystery novels in the series The Mommy-Track Mysteries and four other novels. She has also written autobiographical essays about motherhood. Waldman spent three years working as a federal public defender and her fiction draws on her experience as a lawyer.

Ayelet Waldman was born in Jerusalem, Israel. Her grandparents on both sides were Jewish immigrants to North America from Ukraine early in the 20th century. Her father, Leonard, was from Montreal, Canada, but was living in Israel when he met her mother, Ricki. After they married, they moved to Jerusalem. After the Six-Day War in 1967, the family moved back to Montreal, then Rhode Island, finally settling in Ridgewood, New Jersey, when Waldman was in sixth grade.