Marian Lindberg grew up on Long Island, attended high school in Concord, MA, and began her career as a reporter for The Buffalo Courier-Express covering the criminal justice system, local government, and environmental issues. Lawyers proved to be some of her most informed sources, leading Lindberg to become a lawyer herself. She went on to represent writers, reporters and other communicators and participate in high profile first amendment and civil rights cases. In 2005 she began handling land preservation deals for an international environmental organization and traveled to Brazil to research a family story of murder in the Amazon. The resulting book, The End of the Rainy Season: Discovering My Family's Hidden Past in Brazil won an Elle readers' prize. In her latest book, Scandal on Plum Island: A Commander Becomes the Accused, Lindberg applies her legal and research skills to tell the little-known story of an unmarried Army major portrayed as an out-of-control "homo-sexualist" in a sensational 1914 court-martial on a small island off the eastern end of Long Island.