Joan Mora writes historical and literary fiction. She holds degrees from the University of Maryland in accounting and marketing. With a career in finance in the rearview mirror, her next adventures include writing more novels, lots of reading, globetrotting, and connecting with family and friends. 

 

Raised in a family of four sisters in suburban Maryland, she was introduced to fiction by her bookworm older sister. Their father, too, was rarely without a book in his hands, yet often said, “put down that book and write one of your own.” Joan listened. 

 

An avid traveler, she moved to Texas in 2005 with her husband and son. Instead of driving a moving van west, they set off the other way around—in planes, trains, and boats through nine countries in Europe and Asia, compelling her to set her fiction in the wider world. 

 

Her recently published novel, The Lost Legacy of Gabriel Tucci, is a dual-timeline narrative, following an Italian architect and the woman he saves as they emigrate from 19th-century Trastevere to London, the city where his church designs are stolen by a bitter rival. Generations later, a new rivalry emerges between their descendants. When an art restorer unearths haunting artifacts inside the church, a discovery threatens to dispel everything the rivals believed true. 

 

Her next endeavor is a Depression-era coming-of-age tale, featuring a Jewish bootlegger’s cross-eyed daughter and her unlikely friendship with a 90-year-old Civil-War veteran. 

 

With five other writers, Joan launched the now memorialized blog What Women Write, featuring authors, book reviews and literary musings. 

 

Other things that bring her joy: The London theater, Bodleian Library, The Isle of Skye’s Quiraing, art and architecture, traipsing through centuries-old cemeteries, the cobalt blue of Crater Lake, beach time, ice cream, and a full moon.