When I Was a Little Girl: From the introduction - there used to be a little girl who does not come here any more. She is not dead, for when certain things happen, she stirs slightly where she is, perhaps deep within the air. When the sun falls in a particular way, when graham griddle cakes are baking, when the sky laughs sudden blue after a storm, or the town clock points in its clearest you-will-be-late way at nine in the morning, when the moonlight is on the midnight and nothing movesthen, somewhere beyond sealed doors, the little girl says something, and it is plain that she is here all the time.
Zona Gale (August 26, 1874 December 27, 1938) was an American author and playwright. Gale was born in Portage, Wisconsin, which she often used as a setting in her writing. She attended Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and later entered the University of WisconsinMadison, from which she received a Bachelor of Literature degree in 1895, and four years later a master's degree. After college, Gale wrote for newspapers in Milwaukee and New York City, for six years. A visit to Portage in 1903 proved a turning point in her literary life, as seeing the sights and sounds of town life led her to comment that her 'old world was full of new possibilities.' Gale had found the material she needed for her writing, and returned to Portage in 1904 to concentrate full time on fiction.