Shellan Isackson was born and raised (although often lowered) in Apartheid South Africa. She left at the age of 27 to reinvent herself across the world in America, where nobody knew she was stupid and utterly incapable, and where she has been doing a pretty good job of fooling people for 30 years now, including her husband of almost 30 years some of the time, and even herself every now and then, but excluding her 4 children who definitely know better! They split their time between Austin, Texas, Los Angeles, California, and Whitefish, Montana. However, wherever she is, the roar of Africa still reverberates. Besides cherished time with family, there are few things she looks forward to more than a very hot cup of milky, honeyed English tea and a quiet spot to read a book. But she would give up both of those in a heartbeat (and on certain days maybe even throw in a family member or two) for the joy of listening to snorts rumbling loose from impossibly wide and startlingly meaty-pink-inside hippo snouts breaking the surface of a warm, lazy river, burnished by the setting of an African sun. In her book, that is very hard to beat.