Becky Brock Kiel lives in rural Missouri with her husband and their dog. She is grateful to William Oppenheimer, the recently retired freelance editor, who showed her how to transform her draft into the flowing story she had hoped it could be.

The idea for re-telling the tale of Adam and Eve appeared when she was at work in a library. A short article stating that Homo sapiens nearly went extinct 70,000 years ago captivated her. It took shape in a pair of lonely survivors struggling to adapt to a widespread drought. As the novel developed, Eve stepped up to describe the decline of Eden. In her imagination she relates the story to the younger brother that she had left behind.

Earlier versions of the novel followed Eve’s life from her birth through many years to her standing as an elderly woman, addressing her grown grandchildren. Several literary agents said it was too long to make a marketable first book. So, “Beginning in Eden,” now told as if she is seeing a faraway brother, follows her life growing up in a band of prehistoric people through her escaping with Adam into a barren dessert. The next book will pick up in a foreign land where they struggle to nurture and protect their own children. I see her telling this next story to her grandchild, Cain’s daughter.

I am a follower of Jesus Christ, who feels called to play freely with this part of Genesis. As a member of a small Lutheran (ELCA) church, I am taking online courses toward becoming certified as a Parish Ministry Associate. When agents at the Muse writers conference in Boston asked where I stand on creation and evolution, I put my finger on the edges where two papers came together. I’m a believer who has no problem with the findings of anthropologists. My characters go about their daily lives in a very primitive band of humans that I saw Richard G. Klein describe in THE DAWN OF HUMAN CULTURE (2002). Eve and her mate, Adam, grope toward a budding faith in a Power that they cannot see.