Sharon Creech was born in South Euclid, Ohio to parents Ann and Arvel Creech. She describes her childhood home as "noisy and rowdy" and cites her family-oriented upbringing in South Euclid as the primary inspiration for the Finney family, members of which appear as secondary characters in her 1994 book Walk Two Moons and who are the subjects of her 1990 novel, Absolutely Normal Chaos. Creech also spent a significant amount of time in Quincy, Kentucky, where she has relatives who live on a farm much like the Hiddles' farm in Bybanks, Kentucky in Walk Two Moons. Creech has stated that the town of Bybanks, which features in several of her novels, is a fictionalization of Quincy.
Creech...