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A.B. Whelan was born in 1977 in Hungary, the second daughter of Jozsef and Edit Bizderi. Growing up in a successful business family, she traveled Europe and experienced different cultures.
During her school years Whelan studied Russian, German and English languages. In 2001, she graduated as a computer engineer and majored in management. Thus if anybody tells you math and literature can't walk hand in hand, don't believe them.
Her husband Dan Whelan, worked at a NATO base as a firefighter. Also, he began a start-up music production company in Hungary. Their relationship wasn't love at the first sight, but it grew into a fairy tale love story. Whelan based her first three fictions on her real life romance with her husband.
In the past ten years, A.B. Whelan and her husband have visited Africa, the Middle East, and have resided in Ecuador and Crete. Since 2011, they call the city of Temecula in California their home.
A.B. Whelan was honored with a full page of article about her achievements in Temecula Valley News and Temecula Patch.
She works with Dennis McCarthy, a local retired English Professor, who has been editing her work since her move to Temecula.
Fields of Elysium is her third novel. She is currently working on a sequel.
Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite
When we first meet Molly in "Fields of Elysium", she is having trouble meeting friends at her new school. Molly and her family have just moved from a small town in New Jersey to the California coast. Molly’s world changes even more drastically when she follows her dog, Pandora, through a wormhole into another world, Arkana. The environment is quite different from the high desert she just left, and the trees are lush and green. Molly is approached by a group of teen boys who seem quite friendly and invite her to swim in a nearby pool and spend time with them. When Molly finally decides she’d better head back home, she is amazed to discover that time passes much more quickly in this other world. She had only been gone for a few minutes, yet in that time, she had experienced so much, including meeting Victor, an enigmatic and brooding figure, who seems to have captivated her interest. From that momentous afternoon on, her life is divided into two realities, her time spent with family and in school, and her stolen moments on the other side of the wormhole.
"Fields of Elysium" is a fabulous read. The reader is not assaulted with instant information about the other world; on the other hand, the author, A.B. Whelan, has us share Molly’s gradual understanding and knowledge of that new world as well as her new home environment. Whelan’s characters are not perfect, nor are they predictable in their actions and motivations. It is enjoyable to see how they handle each new situation and rise stronger and wiser each time. "Fields of Elysium" is also an enjoyable 'coming of age tale' that pulls no punches about actions and their consequences but never in a preachy or heavy-handed style. While there are numerous references to Christianity and the Almighty, I never felt that I was being overwhelmed by the author’s faith. It became part and parcel of the theme of the story as any good epic fantasy presents the culture and beliefs of its world and the inhabitants. Whelan paints her faith into the fabric of her story with deft, light brushstrokes, making her work accessible to all, no matter their spiritual beliefs or background. It will be interesting to see how the future volumes of this epic fantasy continue Molly’s tale.
