Douglas Anne Munson

Who was Douglas Anne Munson?

Douglas Anne Munson was an attorney, teacher, and author of four critically acclaimed novels. She published three of those novels under the pseudonym of Mercedes Lambert.

Douglas Anne Munson was born in Crossville, Tennessee on February 17, 1948. She was named Douglas by her father in honor of his brother Douglas who died in World War II.

As the daughter of a newspaperman, Douglas's childhood was spent moving from town to town before her family finally settled in southern California. Douglas attended the University of New Mexico, where she majored in Latin American studies, and lived for a year in Ecuador. After attending law school at UCLA, Douglas became an attorney in the Los Angeles criminal courts. Most of her legal career was spent in dependency court.

Dependency court is where children who have been removed from their parent's custody because of severe abuse, neglect or abandonment move through the legal system. It's a niche of the judicial system with a high burn-out rate.

In 1990, Douglas published a novel called El Niño with Viking Press.