McMummy (12 page)

Byars (bottom left) at age five, with her mother and her older sister, Nancy.

A teenage Byars (left) and her sister, Nancy, on the dock of their father’s boat, which he named
NanaBet
for Betsy and Nancy.

Byars at age twenty, hanging out with friends at Queens College in 1948.

Byars and her new husband, Ed, coming up the aisle on their wedding day in June 1950.

Byars and Ed with their daughters Laurie and Betsy in 1955. The family lived for two years in one of these barracks apartments while Ed got a degree at the University of Illinois and Byars started writing.

Byars with her children Nan and Guy, circa 1958.

Byars with Ed and their four children in Marfa, Texas, in July 1968. The whole family gathered to cheer for Ed, who was flying in a ten-day national contest.

Byars at the Newbery Award dinner in 1971, where she won the Newbery Medal for
The Summer of the Swans
.

Byars with Laurie, Betsy, Nan, Guy, and Ed at her daughter Betsy’s wedding on December 17, 1977.

Byars in 1983 in South Carolina with her Yellow Bird, the plane in which she got her pilot’s license.

Byars and her husband in their J-3 Cub, which they flew from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast in March 1987, just like the characters in Byars’s novel
Coast to Coast.

Byars speaking at Waterstone’s Booksellers in Newcastle, England, in the late 1990s.

Byars and Ed in front of their house in Seneca, South Carolina, where they have lived since the mid-1990s.

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