Born Catherine Feinberg, she grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y., the youngest of three sisters. Her father played the guitar and bass, performing in clubs while working many jobs. Her mother was a writer, with two books on child-rearing to her name. At 17, she left Buffalo for New York City, escaping family, school and even her identity by dropping Feinberg for a new name, Ryan, which belonged to a good friend. She never attended college. By 18, she was in L.A., where her middle sister had moved, and together they started a dog-training business, which she stuck with for 12 years. In April 1985, a few weeks short of her 30th birthday, she moved to Cambria, a tourist town midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, where her mother had settled four years previously. In Cambria, Hyde worked a series of part-time jobs: at a yogurt shop, an answering service and a restaurant as a pastry chef. In the winter of '91, the restaurant closed down and Hyde found herself out of a job in the off-season. Resigned to at least two months of unemployment, she woke up one morning realizing that now she had no excuse not to write. So she sat down at the self-correcting IBM Selectric in the house, and wrote Walter's Purple Heart.
