Born Virginia Cleo Andrews in Portsmouth, Virginia, the third child and first daughter to William Henry, a tool and dye maker, and Lillian Lilnora Parker, a telephone operator. "I was brought up in a working-class environment, with a father who loved to read as much as I did. When I was seven he took me to the public library and signed me up for my first library card. He went home with two books. I went home with nine.

"Books opened doors I hadn't even realized were there. They took me up and out of myself, back into the past, forward into the future; put me on the moon, placed me in palaces, in jungles, everywhere. When finally I did reach London and Paris--I'd been there before."¹

"I loved Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe ... moody books, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Thomas Hardy, books with atmosphere; Russian novels...