Ronan Beckman is historical fiction author with a focus on the “long Regency” and Late Georgian era. He was born in Michigan and for more than three decades has lived in the United Kingdom, with his family. He describes himself as a keen genealogist, inspired by his wife’s ancestors and his own family stories. He’s also an adoptee, who learned growing up he had ancestry in Sweden, which ultimately led him to iscovering his family history. Many of his relatives trace their roots to farming country in central Sweden, a place he visited in the early 2000s to meet his distant kin. That trip has special significance for Beckman and helped solidify part of his family identity. His first novel was published in 2020,  An Actress of Repute, and is available on Amazon. His latest project is to edit an updated version of rare, out-of-print book by a coal miner who became a Member of Parliament. Visions of the Mine by Samuel Woods is available through Amazon. Learn more about his work on his website. In this episode Owens shares his story about his visit to his family villages in South Ostrobothnia, Finland, in 2023 and Beckman shares his story visiting his family's ancestral village about two decades earlier in central Sweden. Both Owens and Beckman found their biological kin in their adulthood. Owens and Beckman are both adoptees born in the Detroit/Metro Detroit area in the 1960s.