"I was born on May 13, 1938, in New York City and grew up on 88th Street between Park and Madison Avenue. By a strange coincidence, when my husband and I found our present apartment in 27 West 96th Street, my mother told me that it was the same building in which I had lived between the time I was born and when I was three when we moved to 88th. I suppose if I was more spiritually inclined, I would say I must have been drawn to that building for that reason. I loved the city as a child and therefore thought of it later as a wonderful place in which to raise children. But when I use the city as a background for my novels, I try to show the side of it I knew, not the extremes of wealth and poverty which have grown ever more acute in...