Eve Ball held bachelors and master's degree and an honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Along-time resident of Ruidoso, on the edge of the Mescalero Apache reservation in southern New Mexico, she conducted her interviews and her research among the Apaches over three decades. Nora Henn and Lynda A. Sanchez, friends who help Ball prepare her manuscript, have since pursued Indian studies and the history of Lincoln County, New Mexico.