Donna Goodacre is a retired English and Foreign Languages teacher. Her career spanned some forty years in New Zealand and Australia. She started her first novel, Finding Miriama, in 2018, when family members convinced her that her ancestors’ story, if told well, could make an interesting read. Five years of historical research later, coupled with a little poetic licence and imagination, it was completed. The sequel, Of Greenstone and Violins, published in 2025, took only one year after her retirement from full-time teaching. The third book in the series, The Spirit Remains came out in 2026.