Nancy Barbara Bond was born January 8, 1945, in Bethesda, Maryland, and grew up near Concord, Massachusetts.
"[3] Bond worked in Boston for Houghton Mifflin publishing from 1966 to 1967, then for two years in London in the promotions department of Oxford University Press.
Set mainly in Borth, near Aberystwyth, where Bond had attended college, it tells the story of an American family spending a year in Wales after the death of their mother.
As Bond put it to an interviewer, "Each of my stories is tied firmly to a geographical setting, which plays an important part in the development of the book.
It received the International Reading Association Award and the Welsh Arts Council's Tir na n-Og for the best English-language children's book about Wales,[5] which called it "a most impressive first novel [in which] Bond deftly blends fantasy and realism...."[7]: 52 The University of Chicago Guide to Children's Literature also praised the characters' growing maturity throughout the story.