Rebecca East was born in Yakima, Washington in 1951, and grew up in a mill town in western Pennsylvania. She has a BA from Carnegie-Mellon University and a PhD from Harvard. She now teaches at a university in New England. Her experiences include volunteer work at an archaeological dig in Scotland, social service with the American Friends Service Committee, lectures at a university in China as a visiting foreign scholar, consulting for the World Health Organization in Geneva, and participation in Project Orbis missions to Cyprus, Swaziland, and Malawi. She spent a substantial amount of time walking around the Pompeii excavation. Fascination with the idea of experiencing Pompeii as a living city led her to read extensively about ancient Roman life and to write this first novel.

Books by Rebecca East

A. D. 62: Pompeii: A Novel

by Rebecca East

A twenty-first century woman is stranded in first century Pompeii when a time travel experiment goes awry; she is sold to a wealthy family as a house slave. This provides her with an intimate, upstairs/downstairs perspective on household life in ancient times. As her influence grows, she wins the love of her master and his daughter and provokes the vengeful jealousy of his wife.