Born in 1971 in Northern Utah, Jennifer A. Nielsen is a New York Times best-selling author of middle grade and young adult fiction, particularly historical fiction and fantasy. Her most well-known works include the Ascendence series (2012-2021), the Traitor’s Game series (2018-2020), and the Mark of the Thief series (2015-2017), as well as standalone novels Resistance (2018), Words on Fire (2019), and Lines of Courage (2022). She has received critical acclaim and earned several literary awards, including the 2019 Sydney Taylor Notable Book Award for Resistance and three Whitney Awards in 2018 for Resistance and The Traitor’s Game. Published in 2021, Rescue is her fourth middle grade historical novel, taking place in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. In an interview published on the Mackin Community website, Nielsen comments:

To me, there isn’t a vast difference between writing a fantasy and a historical. The main difference is that with fantasy my only limit is my imagination, and with historical I’m dealing with a world as it really existed. Otherwise, I am still writing about characters who want to do the right thing, but are up against challenges far bigger than themselves, and who think they are ordinary until difficult things happen to them—then they become heroes (Bullard, Lisa.