Jennifer Armstrong

Jennifer Mary Armstrong (born May 19, 1961) is an American children's writer known for both fiction and non-fiction. She was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, grew up outside of New York City, and now lives in Saratoga Springs, New York. She was formerly married to the author James Howard Kunstler.

As an author who has utilized multiple types of narrative structures, Armstrong believes that

A short story is only one of many narrative structures. We create narrative with jokes, ballads, tales, novels, poems, anecdotes, etc... While there are many satisfactions to be found in the conventional beginning-middle-end narrative that is common in short fiction for kids, I believe young readers can respond to many other forms of short narrative.

After 9/11, she wrote that books can be the "enemy of violent zealotry" and work against chaos and fear.

Intended for middle-school-aged readers, Armstrong wrote this series of five books about an Irish family living in Swampoodle, Washington, D.C. during the Civil War. The family- composed of a drunken father, his son- a bricklayer during the construction of the Capitol building- and his daughter Mairhe, who works at the Shinny, the local pub. There, Mairhe hears patrons discussing the war; though she believes the Irish should not take sides, others see it as "a means to free slaves who will then push them even further down the economic scale in the competitive job market." Her brother Mike joins the Union army, causing her to contemplate the reasoning of Irish loyalty to either side of the war. While working she meets Walt Whitman, who acts as a symbolic unifier to her conflicting feelings by showing her how to open up to new people. In the afterword to Becoming Mary Mehan, Armstrong states that after finishing The Dreams of Mairhe Mehan, she took a train to northern Canada with only one book: a collection of essays about the pioneering naturalists of North America. With that she received the inspiration for the plot of Mary Mehan Awake. Although historically "well-researched," in one book Armstrong misplaced the building of the Capitol in the 1860s despite its completion by 1830. However, she accurately portrays Whitman in Brooklyn on the day after Lincoln's funeral.The Dreams of Mairhe Mehan was listed on the 1998 Young Adult Choices list as a result of being voted in the top 30 by students in American schools grades 7-12.

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