Crook, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Crook was born in 1960 in Nacogdoches and raised in San Marcos, Washington DC, where her father directed VISTA under Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Australia, where her father served as ambassador. Ms. Crook went on to Baylor University, and received her B.A. in English from Rice University.

In 1985, she began intensely researching what would become a lengthy article in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly (July, 1990), focused on the 1828 marriage of Tennessee governor Sam Houston and the 20 year old Eliza Allen. This article became the touchstone of her best-selling first novel, Raven’s Bride, published in 1991 by Doubleday. The 750 pg. manuscript was accepted by the publisher after fifteen publishing houses had rejected it; Crook’s soon-to-be editor at Doubleday, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, called her personally to accept it. Award-winning journalist and author Bill Moyers writes that in Raven’s Bride, Crook “brought to life the great events of Texas past and turned them into a robust novel. The characters, the descriptions, and the drama are a panorama that only a fine historian or inspired novelist could handle to the reader’s delight, and Ms. Crook is both.”

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