Shepherd of the Heart

Jo Dawson grew up on a dairy farm in Wellsford, a small town in the North Island of New Zealand. She spent fifteen years as a teacher in New Zealand and abroad, before becoming a stay at home Mum and completing her graduate degree in theology. She has lived in Australia and the USA for a time and these experiences have added to her love of people and history. Blessed with a vivid imagination and the love of classical literature and historical fiction Jo virtually grew up bosom friends with Anne Shirley, romping with Jo March and her sisters, sailing a raft down the Mississippi with Huckleberry Finn or living in the 'little house' with Laura Ingalls.Born and raised in a strong Christian family Jo's faith is at the centre of who she is, with a lifetime of being involved in Churches and Christian Camps. These two loves, literature and the Lord have inevitably converged into writing compelling stories of strong Christian women, courageously facing the hardships of life on the frontier. It is her hope that women of all ages would find encouragement from her heroine's experiences that while fiction, so often mirror even our modern lives. Jo currently resides in the small North Island town of Waipu in New Zealand, where she lives with her husband, sons, father-in-law, and two very lazy cats.