Ruth C. White Biography

Belle Prater's Boy About the Author

Award-winning author Ruth C. White has her roots in a poverty-stricken coalmining area of Virginia, a fact which greatly influences her writing. White admirably captures the vocabulary, cadence of speech, and colloquialisms common to the area in which she sets the last three of her four books. Autobiographical elements, such as poverty, strong family ties, and the early death of a parent, appear in her last three novels. White herself lost her father when she was just six. She relies on her own feelings and memories of her teen years, which she has called the "most confused and unhappy" time of her life, to create her vivid stories.

Born in the coal-mining town of Whitewood, Virginia, in 1942, White spent her childhood in and around the area. She always wanted to be a writer. Her family frequently read aloud; they did not have television. She and her sisters,...
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