When Kaye Gibbons created Ellen Foster, she had already had an advantage as a writer. Gibbons had very close ties with the narrator and with one of the main secondary characters, Starletta. Outside the book, Gibbon's had a black friend named Starletta and originally wrote a poem about her that eventually evolved into Gibbon's first novel Ellen Foster, which won two literary awards. Both in the book and in Kaye's life, Starletta and the racial conflicts they both faced were real - Whites were not `allowed' or accepted in a community if they befriended a black. The connection between the author and the narrator is, they both experienced the loss of a mother and both dealt with an abusive father. Kaye wrote Ellen Foster with her own wisdom of age, but creates an eleven year old as her narrator. In knowing the author had to personally experience the...