Born in Ponca City, Oklahoma, where both Marked by Fire and Bright Shadow take place, Thomas was the fifth child in a family of nine. Like the characters in Marked by Fire, Thomas picked cotton for most of her early years. By the age of eight she could pick a hundred pounds of cotton a day. Reflecting on her youth, Thomas says: "One of the things we used to do every fall was to pick cotton, and that involved going to live with other families. The Lightsey family--I used their name in the novel Marked by Fire --had twelve children, and we looked forward to living with the Lightseys at harvest time. It was a time to play and spend the night with your best friend. Even though we missed the first part of school because of the necessity of work, we made up for it by telling stories. I suppose we were poor. I know we were poor, but there was the joy of being with other children your own age, and telling and hearing stories." This early fascination with storytelling encouraged Thomas to read; and by the time her family migrated to California to pick tomatoes, when she was ten, she had become an avid reader.
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