Her first book, Life List,[1] was published in 2009 and tells the true story of Phoebe Snetsinger, a housewife and cancer survivor from St. Louis who saw more bird species than anyone else in history.
[2] Gentile grew up in Washington, D.C., attending Sidwell Friends School, and graduated from Harvard in 1996.
Gentile supported herself while writing Life List by working as a part-time assistant to a federal judge in Brooklyn, the Hon.
[5] They live in New York City but spend much of their time upstate, in the rural Hudson Valley.
[3] In a prepublication review, the scientist and author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond, wrote of Life List, Except for one thing, this book would rate as a great adventure novel and fictional psychological portrait, about a woman’s obsession with bird-watching, its effect on her relationships with her husband and her four children, and the horrifying mishaps that she survived on each continent—until the last mishap.