No Way Out: Surviving the Civil War in Northern Alabama (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781500466022)

Patricia H. Quinlan was born in her grandmother's farmhouse in Winston County, Alabama. After growing up in Virginia and graduating from Virginia Tech she moved around, spending seven years at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. This experience led to her first book, Beneath Their Feet, a novel about the history of Mammoth Cave. A reluctance to do research after writing her first book led to Amanda, a book of pure fiction. Her third book, The Story of Peter Looney, was inspired by an article written in 1757 about an ancestor who had been captured by the Indians and later escaped. Her mother often spoke lovingly of her own grandmother. So Growing up in The Free State of Winston, the story of her great-grandmother, Etta Looney was born. After many years in beautiful Colorado she has recently returned to the southeast which is a little like a 180 degree turn. Pat did not grow up aspiring to be a writer. She wanted to be an artist and finally earned her art degree at Western Kentucky University in 1979. However, she felt compelled to write the history of Mammoth Cave, and after six years of hard work self published her first book. The bug bit and she continued writing. She assumed she could write that second book without doing any research, but it didn't turn out that way. Her intention was to see if she could develop a character. Whether or not she was successful others will decide.