Joanne Dahme

Joanne Dahme combines environmental work and formal training in journalism and creative writing with fiction for younger readers. The Plague is a historical fantasy set during the fourteenth-century Black Death. Its narrator, Nell, is taken from poverty because she closely resembles Princess Joan, daughter of Edward III. When the princess dies during a journey toward a royal marriage, Nell is pushed into an identity that places her inside a political scheme and leaves her fleeing across a devastated landscape. The novel appeared from Running Press in 2009 for teen readers. Dahme studied civil engineering at Villanova University, later earned graduate degrees at Temple University, and worked on watershed programs for the Philadelphia Water Department. Her first novel for teen readers, Creepers, also used a vivid setting to place an adolescent protagonist under unusual pressure. In The Plague, researched history and supernatural elements support a direct moral problem: Nell must decide how much of herself she can preserve when powerful people treat resemblance as destiny.