Robertson, Margaret Lowrie 1955(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1955, in Washington, DC; married Nic Robertson (a reporter); children: two daughters. Education: Boston University, B.S. (cum laude).

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Journalist and writer. WINK-TV, Fort Myers, FL, reporter, 1988-89; Cable News Network (CNN), Chicago, IL, reporter, 1989-93, London, England, international correspondent, 1993-2002. Former correspondent for Central Broadcast System (CBS) in Cairo, Egypt, CBS Radio in Beirut, Lebanon, and National Public Radio (NPR) in Poland; started working as a copyboy at the New York Times.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Season of Betrayal was cited as one of nine impressive debuts for fall, 2006, by Publishers Weekly.

WRITINGS:

Season of Betrayal (novel), Tatra Press (Suffern, NY), 2006.

Contributor to the New York Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

Margaret Lowrie Robertson has spent most of her adult life working in the media. She started at the bottom as a copyboy with the New York Times before departing for Egypt, Lebanon, and Poland working for various television and radio organizations. In 1989 Robertson returned to the United States to work as a reporter in Cable News Network's (CNN) Chicago bureau. After a few years there, she moved to the London bureau to become an international correspondent. Like her husband, CNN senior correspondent Nic Robertson, she was thrust into many conflict zones as a journalist, including the Gulf War in 1991 and in Beirut in the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. Marine base in 1984.

It is this attack and her experiences living there that gave her the impetus to write her first novel, Season of Betrayal. Season of Betrayal features Lara McCauley, a woman who accompanies her husband, Mac, a Beirut news bureau chief, in 1983. Mac immediately starts an affair with his Lebanese translator and Lara finds friendship with gay freelance journalist Thomas Warkowski. Lara sleeps with Thomas, starting in motion a series of catastrophic events for both of them. Library Journal contributor David Keymer called Rob- ertson's effort "an exceptional first novel, gripping and real." In Kirkus Reviews, a critic called the story "a harebrained melodrama." However, a Publishers Weekly contributor concluded that Robertson "solidly dramatizes the ironies and ambiguities, moral and otherwise, of Lara's desperate encounters."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Jerusalem Post, January 4, 2007, Ruth Eglash, review of Season of Betrayal.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2006, review of Season of Betrayal, p. 748.

Library Journal, October 1, 2006, David Keymer, review of Season of Betrayal, p. 59.

Pittsburgh Tribune Review, January 21, 2007, Regis Behe, "Novel's Plot Pales in Comparison to War's Chaos."

Publishers Weekly, June 19, 2006, review of Season of Betrayal, p. 35.

ONLINE

Margaret Lowrie Robertson Home Page,http://www.mlrobertson.com (March 7, 2006), author biography.