Susan Lowell's family has lived in the American West since Gold Rush days. She is the author of several picture books for children, including The Three Little Javelinas, a Reading Rainbow Book, and The Bookmaker and the Elves, winner of a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. Her novels for older children are I Am Lavina Cumming and The Boy with the Paper Wings. She and her husband and their two daughters divide their time between Tucson, AZ, and a ranch near the Mexican border.