Katherine's knack for telling anecdotes is part of her gift as a writer. As you get to know her, you realize that the quick wit and strong loyalties with which she endows her characters are qualities that she herself possesses and extends to her family, friends, and the people she works with—even chance strangers…. (p. 368)

Every time I reread one of Katherine's novels, I find something new of value. Most recently I became aware of her abiding sympathy for the underdog, the lowly of this earth. Now that I think of it, that sympathy might be the ripening of this mature, engaged, and engaging women with the ready laugh, who can still recall that when she was a child in Shanghai, she and her friends dramatized over and over The Wizard of Oz—but that she was never allowed to play Dorothy and was always a Munchkin...