Mad Dash

27 December 1944

Patricia Gaffney was born on December 27 in Tampa, Florida, and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. She earned a bachelor's degree in English and philosophy from Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, and also studied literature at Royal Holloway College of the University of London, at George Washington University, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After college, Gaffney taught 12th grade English for a year before becoming a freelance court reporter, a job shepursued in North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., for the next fifteen years. Her first book, a historical romance, was published by Dorchester in 1989. Between then and 199…