I fell in love with my protagonist, Susan Ann Farmer. As I guided elementary school children on tours of Fort Worth, Texas, I sensed a story reaching out to me. "Write it," it seemed to say. The first stop on our tour was at a church cemetery where her parents, Jane and "Press" Farmer, well-known pioneers of Fort Worth, had a plot. Susan wasn't buried there, but I began my research. At first, I wrote about Jane and Press. Then, after interviewing a descendant of the Farmers, I heard about their fleeing Indians and leaving Susan Ann hidden in a hole dug out of the side of a hill, which was the back wall of their sod home.

Even though Susan Ann was only two-years-old at the time, I crawled into her mind and felt the fear, the cold and the darkness that she endured for one whole night. All the time listening to the marauding Indians, who mischievously burned their new log cabin and pilfered some farm equipment.

When Ma and Pa came back the next morning, they found Susan Ann alive and crying for them. That story was retold to her over the years, as were many more. Susan tells this story as she witnessed the events in Fort Worth's history, and as I have imagined their life-style, their ups and downs, their tears of joy and anger.

I became Susan Ann while writing Girl on the Bluff, and in a sense, she became me.