Katharine Tayler Brennan grew up in Brockville, Ontario. Diagnosed with diabetes at sixteen, she strove for an ordinary life, traveling in Europe, managing in bookstores, developing her skills as writer, artist, and photographer. In Montreal, where she lived most of her adult life, she took courses in journalism and creative writing at Concordia University. She died in 1985 at the age of 42.

Katharine Brennan's cousin, psychologist Elizabeth Parsons Kirchner, has lovingly preserved and edited these moving memoirs.