Michael J. Cooper emigrated to Israel in 1966 and lived in Jerusalem during the last year the city was divided between Israel and Jordan. He graduated from Tel Aviv University Medical School, and after a forty-year career as a pediatric cardiologist in Northern California, he continues to do volunteer missions serving Palestinian children who lack access to care. Wages of Empire won the 2022 CIBA Rossetti Award for YA fiction, along with first-place honors for the 2022 CIBA Hemingway Award for wartime historical fiction. His other historical fiction novels include Foxes in the Vineyard, set in 1948 Jerusalem, which won the 2011 Indie Publishing Contest grand prize, and The Rabbi's Knight, set in the Holy Land in 1290. He lives in Northern California with his wife and a spoiled-rotten cat. His three adult children occasionally drop by.
