The author was raised in Guthrie, Oklahoma, by her parents, W. D. "Hoppy" Chandler and Lela Biggs Chandler, with her younger brother, David Chandler. Her father is a retired Guthrie police officer, serving twenty years, from 1951 to 1972. Her mother was a secretary, retiring from Oklahoma Department of Human Services. Shirley was a 1970 Guthrie High School graduate and Oklahoma State University graduate. She was employed at The Guthrie Daily Leader for two years, then for her first law firm employment at Guthrie's Smith & Smith Law Firm. She is married to Lindsey Anderson who is a Vietnam Veteran, living on five acres near Jones, Oklahoma, not far from Guthrie. She has two adult sons, Curtis Kent Smith, age forty-two, Oklahoma City, and Cory Taylor, age thirty-six, an army MP. She lived in the Yukon area for thirty years, raising her sons in the Yukon schools. She has always involved in volunteering at her son's schools, including being a PTA officer for Parkland Elementary School and homeroom mother several years. Also was a Cub Scout Den Mother for the troop at Yukon's Trinity Baptist Church, Vacation Bible School Teacher, and Mission Chairman for several years of Trinity's Women's Mission Union. Also fundraised for animal rescues of horses and dogs. She retired from the State of Oklahoma, working in the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office, State Insurance Fund Legal Department, and Oklahoma Corporation Commission General Counsel's Office, and then worked at several Oklahoma City law firms. Shirley had become interested in writing this book in approximately 1998 and started researching at the Oklahoma Historical Society and Logan County Courthouse. Her father was born in Navina, Oklahoma, and was only ten years old at the time of this book's incident.