Bernadette Calonego was born in Switzerland and grew up on the shores of Lake Lucerne. She was just eleven years old when she published her first story in a Swiss newspaper. She went on to earn a teaching degree from the University of Fribourg, which she put to good use in England and Switzerland before switching gears to become a journalist. As a foreign correspondent, she published stories in Vogue, GEO, and SZ Magazin. After several years working with the Reuters news agency and a series of German-language newspapers, she moved to Canada and began writing fiction. The Stranger on the Ice is her fourth novel to be translated into English, following Stormy Cove, Under Dark Waters, and The Zurich Conspiracy. She lives near Vancouver, British Columbia.