Born and bred in New York, Thea Klapwald has written about travel, self help, entertainment and the arts for publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, AAA's Westways magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, and many publications that no longer exist! She has worked as a reporter for the major weekly The South China Morning Post Sunday magazine in Hong Kong, for Variety in Los Angeles, and The Garden Island Newspaper in Hawaii. She currently works in communications and lives in Los Angeles with her artist husband and teenage son. She has wanted to be a novelist since she was in third grade and read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. She had to overcome cancer, chronic migraines, depression, poverty and the Los Angeles fires in order to continue writing this novel. She was inspired to write Mariela's Moment after reading classic books, like Harold Robbins' The Lonely Lady, Jacqueline Susanne's Valley of the Dolls, and Rita Mae Brown's Ruby Fruit Jungle. The novel Mariela's Moment is the first in a series about a disinherited American twenty-something working as a curator in a modern art gallery in London post-WWII. When she meets the intense and provocative Parisian, Henri, their heady romance is complicated by his drive to recover his family's artworks and heirlooms stolen by the Nazis during the war. Henri hires Mariela to begin the search for the plundered goods and she moves to Paris. When Mariela learns of Henri's background and why he won't change for her, it her rocks her to her core. If Mariela cannot accept Henri as he is, then she must separate her feelings for Henri from the worthy task he's entrusted to her or return to her London life. The novel sheds light on the experience of those post-WWII European individuals who attempted to and continue to attempt to recover their family's possessions.
