Frances Ruley Karttunen is a 1960 graduate of Nantucket High School. After college, graduate school, and a thirty-year career in linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, she returned home to Nantucket. Beginning with The Other Islanders: People Who Pulled Nantucket’s Oars (2005), she has published eleven books about Nantucket history. Her most recent are Nantucket’s North Shore: A Neighborhood History (2014) and Something Should Be Done: A History of the Nantucket Civic League (2015). She has also been active in programming for the African Meeting House on Nantucket, the Saltmarsh Senior Center, and Our Island Home.
