Ardath Frances (Hurst) Mayhar, who was born on February 20, 1930, in Timpson, Texas, attributes much of her literary success to a life of hard work in rural settings. Her parents, Bert Aaron and Ardath (Ellington) Hurst, were farmers, but her mother was also a musician. Mayhar describes her early life as a mix of working on her father's dairy farm (as manager, 1947 to 1957), writing poetry, and gaining a reading proficiency in several languages: Latin, Greek, German, French, Spanish, and Italian. From 1957 to 1962 she was owner and manager of the East Texas Bookstore in Nacogdoches, Texas. Here she met Joe E. Mayhar, whom she married in 1958. Mayhar is the mother of two sons (Frank Edward and James Anthony) and two stepsons (Robert William and William Earl).

Self-educated since high school, Mayhar cites several important influences upon her writing—among them: working as a proofreader for...