Even as a child, Trisha O’Keefe was impressed by the inherent power of alternative medicines. Indigenous healing practices are an ongoing theme in her novels. As a native Southerner, O’Keefe claims to have “a lot of red dirt” flowing in her veins. Growing up, she spent summers on her uncle’s farm in South Georgia, “mainly getting into trouble.” That trend has continued throughout her life. After traveling abroad for fourteen years, running into revolutions or governmental coups nearly everywhere she went—even Britain was in the midst of a labor strike when she moved there—she returned to the States. She is the daughter of Jimmy Jones, a well-known journalist for the Atlanta Constitution under Editor Ralph Magill. One of her earliest memories was the sound of a typewriter rattling away in the middle of the night. You would think that would have cured her from ever putting two words together, let alone a book. Still, at age 6, she co-wrote Spot, The Dog with her sister, followed a long time later by Hanahatchee, Poseidon’s Eye, and Lovesong of the Chinaberry Man. Two more novels, The Magi’s Well, and The Mama Tree were published in 2016. “I guess some things you can’t cure,” O’Keefe says. “You just have to go where they take you.”