Gigi Amateau is the author of the young adult novel, A Certain Strain of Peculiar, a 2010 Bank Street College Best Children's Books of the Year. She also wrote Chancey of the Maury River, a William Allen White Masters List title. Her debut novel, Claiming Georgia Tate, was selected as a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. Come August, Come Freedom, a work of historical fiction for young adults, will be released from Candlewick Press in September 2012. Gigi lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband and daughter.