Natalie Zane Moore was born on July 28, 1932, in Dayton, Ohio. Her ancestors on both sides came to North America in the 1600s and two of them— Isaac Zane, called the White Eagle of the Wyandottes, and Zebulon Pike, the discoverer of Pike's Peak—were pioneers and explorers of some renown. Others among her ancestors founded towns throughout West Virginia and Ohio.

Babbitt's father, Ralph Moore, worked as a labor relations specialist, but, due to the Great Depression and to his wife Genevieve's ambitions for the family, he switched jobs frequently throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The author has emphasized how these moves from one Ohio city to another influenced her personality and her later writing. She tends to write stories about young people who, for one reason or another, are lost or separated from home.

In 1954, soon after graduating from Smith College...