Laurell K. Hamilton was born in Heber Springs, Arkansas but grew up in Sims, Indiana, a hamlet with a population of about one hundred souls. Laurell's mother died in a car crash in 1969, after which time her grandmother held the household together. Her mother's death, her grandmother's role in raising her, and having grown up with no men in the home are "the three things that made who I am," she says. She still believes she would have grown up to be a writer regardless.