Selected Books

Collection of essays
America's Musical Pulse
Includes my essay, "Equal Time"
non-fiction
Jazz Singers: Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History
my essay about great jazz vocalists, male and female
compilation
Riffs & Choruses: a new jazz anthology
extensive selection of the best writing about jazz, edited by Andrew Clark
A Novel
Gringa in a Strange Land
Portrait of the artist as a young woman in Mexico during the 1970's
Biography of a Great American/Woman/ African American Artist/composer and pianist
Morning Glory: a Biography of Mary Lou Williams
"Stunning character...{Mary Lou} Williams has found her writing soul mate in Linda Dahl and the engrossing result is Morning Glory." - Gene Santoro, The New York Times Book Review'
Complete and In-depth Analysis of Women in Jazz
Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen
“The definitive work on women in music – an incredible job of research.”–John Hammond. "For anyone who loves jazz, this is their book." - "Los Angeles Times."
Biography of a Gifted Writer and Interpreter of the Great American Songbook
Haunted Heart: a Biography of Susannah McCorkle
The secret life and tragic death of a great American songbird. "{The book} is vivacious, tender, saturnine, industrious and deeply intelligent." - Leon Wieseltier, "The New Republic."
Short Stories About My Favorite Part of the World
Come Back, Carmen Miranda: Stories about Latin America
The main character is Latin America itself: tragic, lush, violent, romantic. "A wonderful group of stories." - "Danbury News-Times."

My Latest Books

Imaginary cover for Cleans Up

My new novel is ready to find a publisher! Here's what one critic has to say about the manuscript:

"Cleans Up Nicely is a novel that renders a vivid portrait of the mind, body and spirit of a young woman artist in the hard-edged, decadent and anarchic Manhattan of the l970's.

A continuation of the journey of Erica Mason, whom we encountered in Mexico in the author's fine previous novel, Gringa in a Strange Land, her rite of passage is not only a love affair with art, men, alcohol, drugs and jazz in the swirl that was the downtown scene in a radically evolving era in New York, but a also a resurrection from addiction and self-delusion.

Erica's story --at once fast-moving, funny, and heart-rending--is a deftly handled study of one gifted young woman's path from self-destruction to self-knowledge, self-respect and well-being."

Randolph Hogan, formerly an editor of The New York Times Book Review



About Loving Our Addicted Daughters Back to Life: The Complete Guide



And now...the new book I am working on: Loving Our Addicted Daughters Back to Life: The Complete Guide combines cutting-edge gender-specific information about addiction and recovery with all the tools that parents and other loved ones need to help young women struggling with substance abuse. I bring 35 years of strong personal commitment to the recovery process. I bring my family's own story of a daughter's addiction and wellness. I bring a reputation as an author repeatedly praised for her ability to synthesize and interpret complex material.

Loving Our Addicted Daughters Back to Life explores the exploding problem of addiction among young women. It gathers and explains the array of new research in the sciences and therapeutic modalities that have been emerging since the l990's to better help both addicted women and men recover their health. My goal is to help parents make the right choices for their daughters.

Tragically, more women die from alcoholism and other substance abuse each year than from breast cancer. This is a timely, urgently needed book with a large audience.


Kat and I getting down


I have always loved to write about characters - usually edgy, little-known folks with wonderful stories and talents. I love places too and music, above all jazz. As a girl, I dreamed of traveling around the world and as soon as I could, I took to the road, living in steamy Guayaquil, Ecuador at l7 with a family, recalled in "Coming of Age in Ecuador" in my story collection Come Back, Carmen Miranda. I was later fortunate to live and work in other Latin American countries - Peru, Brazil, and especially various parts of Mexico.

After college, I moved to the Yucatan in Mexico with the portable Olivetti that went everywhere with me. I was in a state of painful urgency, wanting and needing to write but not getting very far. (It was the early '70's.) Much of me is in my newest book, Gringa in a Strange Land, but it is fiction. A year or so later, I made the pilgrimage to another strange land called New York, with a suitcase, several hundred dollars and two contacts. Finding the requisite cheap, shabby apartment (you could still do so in those days), I started writing in earnest. I had a number of ridiculous jobs to pay the rent, such as writing reviews of C- movies I never actually saw (no one else seemed to either), driving an ice-cream truck in Central Park for one day (I crashed into a tree or rock and was immediately fired), and writing a history of the cheeses of the world with a two-week deadline for a manic food editor. In time, I produced several novels, biographies and essays about great women jazz personalities and continued traveling, writing about quirky Latin American finds like the Carmen Miranda Museum in Rio, a "candomble," a.k.a. voodoo priestess, and a Mayan folk healer who talked to plants.
I am happy to say that most of my books have been published, well-reviewed and are still in print. Gringa in a Strange Land, my newest, is set in Mexico. A portrait of an artist as a young woman on one level, but also a portrait of that exhilarating and confusing time especially in the developing world. A time when revolution seemed imminent, when the "counter-culture" and its Mexican equivalent offered both hope and ennui, violence as well as peace and love. Sex, drugs, and Latin rhythms.


Books in print:

January 2010: Gringa in a Strange Land A novel, this is a portrait of the artist as a young woman, an on-the-road body and soul adventure in Mexico set in the early 1970's. "You'll think of Robert Stone's work and Babet Schroeder's film More in that the novel so adeptly renders an era, a country and a state of mind." Randolph Hogan, translator of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor


Stormy Weather: A History of Women in Jazz, was called “a brilliant work” by Publishers Weekly and “inspiring” by The New York Times. “For anyone who loves jazz, this is their book,” declared The Los Angeles Times.

Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams, wrote Gene Santoro in the New York Times Book Review, “is a stunning character in search of a soul mate. Williams has found her writing soul mate in Linda Dahl, and the engrossing result is Morning Glory. "Every great artist deserves a biography of this caliber,” wrote Scott Yanow in Jazz Improv. Morning Glory was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 2000.

Come Back, Carmen Miranda: Stories about Latin America "Deft and deep portraits of not only American middle-class young people disaffectedly roaming ‘the other America,’ but also of the people who live there. A wonderful group of stories.” Danbury News-Times

Haunted Heart: A Biography of Susannah McCorkle. "{The book} strikingly resembles the woman it describes: it is vivacious, tender, saturnine, industrious and deeply intelligent." Leon Wieseltier in The New Republic


February 2011: "Gringa in a Strange Land" receives the Writers in the Sky Award for the Best Creative Writing of the Year in 2010