Ruth Doan MacDougall, whose father wrote novels and hiking books, began writing stories of her own at the age of six in her hometown of Laconia, New Hampshire. She never stopped. Today, she is the respected author of deeply felt novels about the lives of women, including The Cheerleader, her acclaimed coming-of-age bestseller about a teenage girl in the 1950s, which launched her acclaimed Snowy Series. A recipient of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project’s Lifetime Achievement Award, MacDougall continues to write novels and to update her late father’s hiking books. She is happy to say that she is still madly in love with her husband of fifty-five years and explains that her novel One Minus One came about when she tried to imagine what her life would be like if they ever divorced. She lives in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire.