Meira bat Erachaim was born in South Africa and spent her childhood in the heart of apartheid. She left her homeland to attend university in the United States, after which she worked as a helicopter pilot in the rugged wilderness of Alaska. She then surprised everybody, including herself, and moved to rural China, where she lived and worked as an English teacher. She eventually settled in Israel to be closer to her family. Along the way she befriended and was influenced by a wide variety of people from all corners of the world with disparate political opinions and religious beliefs. The places she lived and, more importantly, the people she met helped form her distinctive point of view. Her perspective is unapologetically sincere, sometimes controversial, and never humourless.