Erica Verrillo

Erica Verrillo builds middle-grade fantasy around courage, language, loyalty, and a bond with animals. Elissa’s Quest opens the Phoenix Rising trilogy with Elissa living as a healer's apprentice in High Crossing. She speaks with animals but knows little about her parents until a royal visitor draws her into a struggle over a kingdom and a prophecy. World’s End concludes the trilogy after Elissa's Odyssey, carrying Elissa's search for family and freedom toward the boundaries of her world. Random House's children's division published Elissa’s Quest in 2007 and World’s End in 2009. Verrillo has explained that she created Elissa's adventures while entertaining her ill daughter, then wrote them down years later at her request. That origin helps explain the trilogy's balance of danger and humor. Elissa is never merely the subject of a prophecy; her ability to listen across species gives her relationships and choices that challenge the political uses others imagine for her.