Welcome to Juliette Godot’s Biography
When imagining her biography, Juliette Godot always returns to the moment that lit the first spark—watching Roots by Alex Haley. The powerful series awakened in her a deep yearning to uncover her own family history. That childhood fascination grew into an unrelenting pursuit. Over the decades, she traced nearly 40,000 ancestors, unraveling threads of history that reached far beyond what she could have imagined.
Juliette Godot: A Voice for the Forgotten
Juliette’s search for identity led her down the winding back roads of France to the little-known principality of Salm—an isolated region where superstition and faith once held equal sway. It was there, hidden in the records, that Juliette discovered her twelfth-generation grandmother, Catherine Cathillon. A small asterisk beside Catherine’s name would change everything. The note shocked her—a fate shared by too many women of that era, but this time, it wasn’t just history. It was her own blood.
That revelation became the seed of a novel.
At the time, Juliette was working as a software engineer at Carnegie Mellon University. Her genealogical sleuthing was a passionate hobby—until a string of car accidents upended her life. In the span of nine years, she was rear-ended five times while stopped at red lights, in an era when texting had become epidemic. The crashes left her with repeated concussions, whiplash injuries, and ultimately, permanent conditions: Trigeminal Neuralgia (the suicide disease), TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint Disorder), and Vertigo. Unable to continue her career, she faced a long stretch of silence and stillness.
Turning Adversity into Inspiration
What began as a way to reclaim her purpose became a decade-long writing journey. Immersed in Renaissance France, Juliette found herself drawn to the unsung resilience of Salm’s people—those who endured famine, war, and persecution while clinging to their faith. The deeper she delved, the more she realized that though centuries pass, human nature remains strikingly unchanged. The courage of her ancestors cast her own trials in a new light. Their survival inspired her own.
Finding Purpose Through History and Resilience
The Renaissance Era, the unsung country of Salm with its myths and legends, and the grit of the people steadfast in faith as wars of religion surrounded them enveloped Juliette. A renewed sense of purpose helped her to realize, comparatively, that her problems were minuscule. The more she researched, the more she found that though time and issues change, people do not. With all her health problems, it took Juliette more than ten years to write Catherine’s story.
Biography of Award-Winning Historical Fiction and Literary Success
In 2021, she submitted her debut novel, From the Drop of Heaven, to the Royal Palm Literary Awards and won a Gold Medal for unpublished historical fiction. That recognition led to a publishing contract with Brown Posey Press in 2022. Accolades followed: the Sunny Award, 5-Star Highly Recommended Award of Excellence, and an Honorable Mention in their Book of the Year Award. In 2023, the novel received a Reader’s Favorite 5-Star Review and was a Chanticleer Chaucer Award finalist. In 2024, Beacon Audiobooks brought the story to life in audio, releasing it that November.
A Celebrated Author with Deep Roots and Diverse Passions
Juliette has been featured in magazines such as Grit & Goals (2024 Fall Issue, pages 31 & 32), Historical Times (April 2023 Edition), and Author’s Lounge. What started as a way to cope with disability has been a major achievement in her life.
Juliette and her husband of forty years make their home in beautiful Western Pennsylvania. She still works on her genealogy, likes to paint, babysit her grandchildren, and tend to her pollinator garden.
