Born Mary Avery Lathrop, November 19, 1917 is from a family of published authors.  Likely you've never heard of them...  Her father, Frank Waldo Lathrop, wrote agricultural texts for the Department of Agriculture in the second quarter of the 20th century and taught Agriculture at University of Minnesota.  He retired to Portland, Maine (I remember the farm on Blackstrap Hill).
Waldo's sister, Dorothy West Lathrop, published a series of  historical adventures for "young adults" under the name of West Lathrop.  These have now been replaced on library shelves with other more modern stories, but may be (with persistence) found in private libraries and used book stores.  They were quite popular in her time.
And, of course, my mother is also published - a number of times during my childhood and adolescence...  Children's stories, primarily -  although reading some of the stories I have here, it is not difficult where I got the darker side of my humor.
She is also an accomplished artist and my house is filled with paintings she didn't want to keep when she moved a few years ago.