When I was a little girl, I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up: an author.

I had fallen in love with books and stories as soon as I read—or someone read me—the first one. They were magical things, alive, breathtaking, full of a promise I could not wait to claim.

I started writing on blank sheets of paper that my mother kept stocked, along with sharpened pencils. My first stories featured characters by the names of Laura, Mary, Carrie, Ma, and Pa. They lived on the frontier and ha...