Patricia Highsmith was born Mary Patricia Plangman, in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921 to newlyweds Mary Coates and Jay B. Plangman (Wilson 21). The marriage between Highsmith's parents was, essentially, a failure. When Mary discovered she was pregnant just four months after their marriage, she and Plangman almost immediately separated, and they were divorced just months after Highsmith's birth. During her pregnancy, Mary Coates tried to give herself an abortion by drinking turpentine. The abortion was unsuccessful, and became a sort of "family joke," which Coates told her daughter regularly ("It's funny you adore the smell of turpentine, Pat," Highsmith recalls her mother laughing) (Wilson 22).

Highsmith's mother was remarried to Stanley Highsmith in 1924. Although Patricia adopted his last name, she "from their first meeting... disliked her stepfather" (26).

As Highsmith grew out of childhood, which she saw as "a little hell," she realized that her passion was literature and writing (30). Highsmith enrolled in Barnard College in New York. There, Highsmith's interest in writing blossomed, and she decided that she not only wanted to be a novelist, but that her strength was the disturbing, the dark, and the suspenseful. Highsmith also developed her first crush, on a classmate named Helen. No relationship developed between the two women, as Helen was, by all accounts, heterosexual and engaged, but the budding realization of her sexuality opened a whole new world for Highsmith (87).

This realization was not concrete, however. For six months in 1949, Highsmith made a futile effort to analyze and ''cure'' herself of her lesbianism for her fiance, the novelist Marc Brandel. The engagement was eventually called off as Highsmith "veered wildly between a desperate wish to be married and the sickening knowledge that if she did so, she would not only destroy [Brandel], but herself as well" (153).

After Brandel, Highsmith did not have any romantic relationships with men, but she had numerous intense relationships with women. Among her lovers were a housewife named Virginia Kent, a doctor named Katherine Cohen, authors Lynn Roth and Ann Clark, Mary Ronin, actress Tabea Blumbenschein, and Monique Buffet (Wilson).

In 1949, Highsmith moved to Europe, where she lived for the remainder of her life. By 1994, she had lived for a time in several coutries, including England, Germany, France, and Switzerland.

Over the next forty-five years, Highsmith wrote over thirty-two novels, non-fiction books, and short-story collections. She won several literature awards in Europe, including the O. Henry Memorial Award, Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, numerous British literature awards, and the Edgar Allan Poe award.

However, Highsmith never received wide recognition in America, and several of her novels that strayed from her typical "crime" genre were rejected by American publishers.

In 1995, Highsmith died in her home in Switzerland, surrounded by "her pet cats and snails" (Cassuto 4). She was cremated and her ashes were buried in Tengna, Switzerland, where they remain today.

*Collage: images compiled from Amazon Books (Germany), Bloomsbury Publishing,
Greendale Persuasive Projecy: Communism, and personal art