Jan Neubert Schultz grew up in Mankato, MN, and graduated from Minnesota State University, Mankato. She has taught second and third grades, and more recently, Early Childhood. She now lives with her husband along the bluffs of the Minnesota River Valley on a farm that was homesteaded by the Schultz family in 1869. A fifth-generation Minnesotan, Ms. Schultz has been fascinated since childhood by the stories that have been handed down in her family and by the people and events that have shaped Minnesota's history.