In this inspiring biography, discover the true story of Harriet the Spy author Louise Fitzhugh—and learn about the woman behind one of literature’s most beloved heroines. Born in 1928, Fitzhugh was raised in segregated Memphis but soon escaped her cloistered world and headed for New York, where her expanded milieu stretched from the lesbian bars of Greenwich Village to the art world of postwar Europe. Her circle of friends included members of the avant-garde like Maurice Sendak and Lorraine Hansberry. Fitzhugh’s novels, written in an era of political defiance, are full of resistance: to authority, to conformity, and even—to a radical extent for a children’s author— to make-believe. As a children’s author and a lesbian, Fitzhugh was often pressured to disguise her true nature, making her story both compelling and poignant. Harriet the Spy, first published in 1964, has mesmerized generations of readers and launched a million diarists, with its beloved antiheroine, Harriet, being erratic, unsentimental, and endearing—very much like the woman who created her.