In second grade, Lydia Reeder won an award for reading the most difficult books. She was fascinated by Joan of Arc’s heroic life and had checked out and read all of the biographies about the patron saint of France from the school library. Today, she’s writing about other pioneering women from history.

Lydia is the author of the award-winning Dust Bowl Girls: The Inspiring Story of the Team that Barnstormed Its Way to Basketball Glory, a thrilling depiction of the birth of women’s competitive basketball that takes place in Oklahoma and Texas during the Great Depression.

An Oklahoma native, Lydia’s roots run deep. Some of her favorite times as a child were spent on her grandfather’s ranch near Chickasha making hay-bale tunnels, fishing for bass, or traipsing through miles of pasture. Today, she lives in Denver with her husband and their five cats. Her outdoor adventures include hiking the long, rocky trails that wind through the mountains of Colorado.

Her upcoming book, The Cure for Woman: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine that Changed Women’s Lives Forever (St. Martin’s Press, December 2024), reveals the nineteenth-century origin of the pseudo-science that supposedly connects all of women’s ills to her reproductive system. It tells the story of the women doctors and suffragists, led by Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, who fought back against this attempt to control women’s bodies and lives.

Prior to becoming an author, Lydia worked for many years developing eLearing for continuing education in the fields of nursing and healthcare.