Katherine Pinotti, a native Texan, grew up in rural North Carolina in a small town on the South Carolina border. As a young child, her grandmother delighted in recounting endless tales of the Civil War, and how their family barely survived General Sherman's devastating march to the sea, and the reconstruction that followed. With Yankee as well as Confederate heroes in her family's history, Gone With The Wind became her favorite literary work the instant she first read the book at age thirteen. Enarmored with the old south's romantic bygone era, Katherine wrote The Winds of Tara as a tribute to the original work, carrying on the saga as Margaret Mitchell would have wanted, keeping the beloved characters of Scarlett, Rhett, Mammy, Suellen, and the others, true to life as we remembered them, allowing their lives to continue to unfold in a believable story that readers will again enjoy for a lifetime.

Physician, teacher and author, Katherine currently lives on a small east Texas ranch with her husband and children, seven dogs and fifteen cats. She spends most of her free time traveling, rock-hounding, gardening, and of course writing constantly.