Born and raised in Pennsylvania, the author grew up near the woods and mountain streams where Indians, settlers and Revolutionary patriots once roamed. Cross-cultural tales of whites captured and adopted by Indians, and Indian orphans raised by white families stayed in her imagination as she went on to serve as an R.N. in WWII. Her sense of adventure moved her West to California, where she raised a family, worked in surgery, and became a quilter and a rose-gardener. In the "third-third" of her life, she bravely joined the Oakmont Writers Group in Sonoma County and researched and worked on her first novel for 10 years.