Award-winning author Pamela Smith Hill's roots are in Springfield, Missouri, the setting of this young adult novel.

Hill was born in 1954 in Springfield, Missouri. Her father is a retired minister and painter and her mother, Carolyn Clark Hill, is a homemaker. Hill says that she grew up on Bible Stories and old television Westerns.

Perhaps that is why she enjoys writing about the past. Also she admired the writing of Louisa May Alcott and particularly enjoyed Jo March's character in Alcott's novel Little Women. Hill says that Jo was a tomboy and longed to be a writer like she did. During Hill's college years, she served as editor of the student newspaper, the Southwest Standard at Southwest Missouri State University, and as a newspaper staff writer for the Springfield Leader and Press.

Hill's newspaper career in Springfield covered all facets of writing community life...