Claire Dat­now, a retired teacher in the Birm­ing­ham Pub­lic School Sys­tem, has pub­lished numer­ous works of fic­tion and non­fic­tion, most recent­ly a series of eco-mys­ter­ies for mid­dle school stu­dents and a mem­oir of grow­ing up white and Jew­ish in apartheid South Africa.