Elizabeth Yates was born in Buffalo, New York, on December 6, 1905, the sixth of seven children in the family of Harry and Mary Duffy Yates. From kindergarten through the twelfth grade she attended the Franklin School in Buffalo, followed by a year of boarding school in Mamaroneck, New York.

Equally important in her development as a writer, however, were the summers she spent on her father's farm south of Buffalo. On sunny days she roamed the countryside on horseback, composing stories in her head; on rainy days and during other free moments, she retired to her secret writing place, an unused pigeon loft.

For three years, Yates worked for a newspaper and a magazine in New York as a book reviewer, researcher, and feature and fiction writer. The time period that she refers to as her "apprenticeship" as a writer ended when her first book...