Catherine L. Knowles

About the Author Catherine L. Knowles considers herself an unlikely author. As a child she often skipped school, preferring adventure to the classroom. She discovered early on that you cannot pirate a Tennessee River dock and use it to float to the beach. The inspiration for Knowles's ideas come from watching the waters of the Tennessee flow past her home in Huntsville, Alabama, where she and her architect husband live with Sugar, their spoiled-rotten rescued dog. Caught up in her husband's quest to rebuild the small abandoned town of Taylorsville a half-mile from their home, Knowles found herself deep in the library archives researching the region's history from 1900 to 1926. A woman who once skipped history class became hooked on the past, and her imagination of what it was like to live in this remarkable period of Alabama’s history…a passion that led to The Doughnut Tree.