Eva J. Kelly, born in Massachusetts in1897, began her writing career at age nine when she sold a story about horses to the children’s page of her local newspaper. This success was not a surprising one, as she grew up in a home in which writing, books and storytelling were vital parts of daily life. Eva’s father, a doctor, who was also a writer of poetry, “used to come upstairs after office hours were over and read or tell us legends and stories of Irish saints and scholars.” Likewise her mother “had her own collection of tales . . . all dramatic and all, I realize now, inspirational.”