Adina Sara was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and moved to the Bay Area to attend the University of California, Berkeley, during the political upheaval of the 1960’s. She graduated with a B.A. in English Literature, and promptly married and had two sons.
By the time she was 30, and a single mother, she found work as a clerk typist in a law firm. That short term job turned into a 25-year stint in a string of law offices that not only paid the bills, but provided grist for her first memoir – 100 Words Per Minute: Tales From Behind Law Office Doors.
The better part of her second marriage was taken up remodeling a barely habitable house, and pulling rocks and glass out of a sprawling mess of garden. Her years of taming the landscape provided her with material for her second memoir, The Imperfect Garden, in which she uncovers life’s deepest lessons while working in the dirt.
Sometime in the early 90’s, she invested in a piece of land in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The purchase turned out to be a bad idea–neither she nor her new husband had the wherewithal to make something of the place. She sold it a few years later and forgot about it. About a decade later, the memory of that land came back to her in a dream, planted its seed, and became the setting for her novel, Blind Shady Bend.
Besides her love of writing and gardening, Adina has been a lifelong musician, expressing herself through the singing of folk, country, classical, jazz and contemporary music. Her decades of broken marriages and personal struggles resulted in three collections of songs Feel A Change (all recordings burned in a fire), Love Song to Myself, and Just For The Song. Since retiring from her singer/songwriter days, she has performed in classical, world music and pop choruses and currently performs with Voci Women’s Ensemble. Her love of singing grows stronger with age.
Adina resides in Oakland, California with her husband, and makes frequent visits to her native Los Angeles to enjoy the company of her two sons and daughters-in-law, three granddaughters and grandson, who fill her with pride, joy and immense gratitude.