I grew up in Kent, Ohio in a Catholic home. After high school, I entered a Poor Clare Monastery where I lived a spiritually challenging life for thirty years and then launched into hermit life in a cabin in a WV holler - a transformative experience! I met and married Fr. Paul Fredette in 1996. We've been living on a mountainside in North Carolina for over sixteen years where we maintain a world-wide ministry to hermits. I've been writing and publishing since 1969 - articles, poetry, short stories, biography, fiction and non-fiction books. I mentor solitaries, co-edit Raven's Bread Newsletter and look after our four-legged family of two Border Collies and two white cats.

My autobiographical work "Where God Begins to Be, A Woman's Journey into Solitude" was chosen as a Catholic Book of the Month selection when published in 1994. "Consider the Ravens, On Contemporary Hermit Life" earned a Bronze Medal in the 2012 IPPY Awards. I also was awarded a Gold Medal for a short story in the local Silver Arts contest.