Little in Eileen Goudge's childhood would seem to prepare her for the dramatic course of events her life later took. "I was born in San Mateo, California, the second of six children, and was raised in Woodside, which, after the freeway, became a suburb of San Francisco. I went to a neighborhood elementary school, and from there a little high school, and I don't think the first seventeen years of my life were in any way remarkable. But after that, I felt like Dorothy caught up in the cyclone.

"When I was active in writing young adult novels, I kept my high school yearbook by my desk so I could summon memories from that period. I had the great advantage of being unpopular back then, and I think every unpopular kid has a secret yearning to reinvent his high school years--not for revenge, but just to be more...