Born in 1952 in Warren, Ohio, Jennifer Carolyn Robin McKinley spent her childhood on the move. She and her mother, Jeanne Carolyn (maiden name Turrell), followed her father, William, a naval officer, from posting to posting. Because she was always being uprooted, she found her security in books. Indeed, she claims that the story of her life is told in her reading. For instance, she read Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book in California, C. S. Lewis's Narnia books in New York, J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings in Japan, and T. H. White's Once andFuture King in Maine. McKinley's household was a bookish one, and like that of many authors, her interest in storytelling was inspired by her reading. In particular, Sara Crewe, the heroine of Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess, a wonderful teller of tales, made McKinley want to tell...