After a short time there she moved again, to Kansas City, where she took a job at WHB writing advertising copy; eventually she was given her own program on the station about local events.
It was these visits which provided the inspiration for the novel The Moonflower Vine, much of which is based on stories from Carleton's family and other residents of the town.
[1] Carleton and her husband moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1970, and opened a publishing house, The Lightning Tree, with the money earned from her novel.
She had nearly finished it in 1997, and was preparing to shop it around for publication when she suffered a stroke and hit her head on a stone floor at her house; she was not found for some hours, and ultimately was robbed of her ability to speak.
At her death in 1999 her papers went to a nephew in Missouri; the novel was thought lost in a May 2003 tornado, but it had instead been preserved by her literary executor, Larry Calloway, in Santa Fe.
As a result, the novel was republished by Harper Perennial in April 2009, with an introduction by Missouri writer Jane Smiley, an avowed fan of the work.