Christopher L. Webber is a priest of the Episcopal Church who has served parishes in Brooklyn and Long Island, Tokyo, Japan, and Bronxville, New York. In retirement he served parishes in the northwest corner of Connecticut. He grew up in Cuba, New York, a small town in the western part of the state, and graduated from Princeton University before earning two theological degrees and an honorary degree from the General Theological Seminary in New York. Webber's writing career began late in his ministerial life when he was asked to write A Vestry Handbook, which is still in print fortyyears later; his subsequent books are wideranging, from hymnals, church guidebooks, and collections of prayers, to The Beowulf Trilogyand American to the Backbone, a biography of James W.C. Pennington, a fugitive slave who became a leading figure in the pre-Civil Warabolition movement. His wife, Margaret Rose, died just short of their 60th anniversary. Webber has four children and four grandchildren and lives in San Francisco.