Odette Taylor

Odette Taylor was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1949, flying to Napier with her family at the age of three weeks. She began her working life in Napier as a shorthand typist for an insurance company where she met her husband, Doug Taylor. She married Doug at the age of twenty-two. In Masterton, Doug died at the age of thirty-four from cancer. Odette brought up her three daughters aged eight, five and three on their farmlet for nine years before moving into town. She trained as a primary school teacher and worked as a teacher in New Zealand, Nanjing, Beijing and, finally, Hong Kong until the age of sixty-six.

While in Nanjing, Odette wrote Ghosts of the Past.