Mary Doria Russell is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 novelist. Russell was born in the suburbs of Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. Her parents were both in the military: her father was a Marine Corps

United States Marine Corps

The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...

 drill instructor

Drill instructor

A drill instructor is a non-commissioned officer or Staff Non-Commissioned Officer in the armed forces or police forces with specific duties that vary by country. In the U.S. armed forces, they are assigned the duty of indoctrinating new recruits entering the military into the customs and...

, and her mother was a Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

 nurse. She graduated from Glenbard East High School and later she earned a Ph.D

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 in biological anthropology

Biological anthropology

Biological anthropology is that branch of anthropology that studies the physical development of the human species. It plays an important part in paleoanthropology and in forensic anthropology...

 at the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

. She was raised as a Catholic but left the church at age fifteen, and her struggles to figure out how much of that culture to pass on to her children fueled the prominence of religion in her work.

Russell currently lives in Lyndhurst, Ohio

Lyndhurst, Ohio

As of the census of 2000, there were 15,279 people, 6,642 households, and 4,397 families residing in the city. The population density was 3,480.1 people per square mile . There were 6,855 housing units at an average density of 1,561.4 per square mile...

, a suburb of Cleveland, with her husband, Don.