Christel M. Crane - The Author

 Author and award-winning filmmaker Christel Crane has spent a career in the examination of historical periods and, sometimes, obscure events - revealing them with an entirely new, fresh and thought-provoking perspective. All her work has reflected a deep desire to inform and excite her readers. 

Research and assignments have taken her to the crowded back streets of Kabul, throne rooms of Arab kingdoms, the Great Wall of China, and ruins of the Roman Empire. She has engaged with leaders of nations, survivors rising up from the shambles of post war Balkans, and everyday people around the world.

Her historical novel takes us back to the end of the 19th century when civilization was rapidly advancing – a time when it seemed the only impediment to greatness was character and determination.

Much has been written, most of it merely re-shaped and re-printed, on the Nobel Prizes. The prizes are, without a doubt, unique in the world.  To that point, it is stunning how little is widely known as to how the Nobel Prizes actually came into being; how Nobel himself has been largely misrepresented; and the complete lack of understanding of the modest but determined young Swedish chemist responsible for bringing the Nobel Prizes to the world. 

Researching the story over multiple decades, Christel Crane has dived deeply into the cultural dynamics of the late 19th century – how people lived - and the explosion of scientific discovery and practical applications. She has also built an extensive genealogy of all the characters in order to infer how they interacted and why. 

In the final analysis there was no question that the most powerful manner in which to tell the story is as a historical novel, filling in the dry historical and legal record with those aspects which would bring real color and feeling to this amazing  story – leaving the reader rewarded with both new understanding and a powerful new empathy and enjoyment for events that  happened over a century ago.