Sara Gruen was born in Canada. She became a US citizen and was working as a technical writer here in 1999. Two years later she was laid off and decided to become a full-time writer of fiction. She is married and lives in North Carolina with her husband, three children, dogs, cats, horses and a goat. She is one of a very few number of people who has actually visited the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa. There she was researching the bonobos monkeys and began writing her novel, Ape House. Her earlier bestselling novel, Water For Elephants, will soon be made into a movie.