Background
Brink was born and raised in Moscow, Idaho, in the Palouse region. Orphaned at age eight following her mother's suicide, Brink lived in Moscow with her widowed maternal grandmother and an unmarried aunt; the grandmother had grown up on a farm in Wisconsin. In a preface to the later edition of Caddie Woodlawn, the author said the books were partly based on the life of her grandmother, Caddie Woodhouse Watkins (1853–1940), and her siblings: elder sister Clara, elder brother Tom, younger brother Warren, younger sisters Henrietta and Minnie, and Baby Joe.
The house where her grandmother had lived is now a historical site, about 12 miles (19 km) south of Menomonie, Wisconsin.
Read more about this topic: Caddie Woodlawn
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
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