Editing Patricia Cornwell (section)

==Early life==
A descendant of [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]] and writer [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]],<ref>{{cite web|author=Patricia Cornwell Biography and Notes |url=https://www.biblio.com/cornwell-patricia/author/592?placement=last-name-C |title=Patricia Cornwell Biography and List of Works - Patricia Cornwell Books |publisher=Biblio.com |date=June 9, 1956 |access-date=January 30, 2012}}</ref> Cornwell was born on June 9, 1956, in [[Miami, Florida]], second of three children, to Marilyn (née Zenner) and Sam Daniels. Her father was one of the leading appellate lawyers in the United States and served as a law clerk to [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] Justice [[Hugo Black]]. Cornwell later traced her own motivations in life to the [[emotional abuse]] she says she suffered from her father, who walked out on the family on [[Christmas Day]] 1961. She has said, "He was on his deathbed. We knew it was the last time we were seeing each other; he grabbed my brother's hand and mouthed 'I love you,' but he never touched me. All he did was write on a legal pad 'How's work?'"<ref name = Times/>

In 1961, Marilyn left with three children in tow and moved to [[Montreat, North Carolina]]. [[Ruth Graham|Ruth Bell Graham]], wife of the evangelist [[Billy Graham]] took the wayward family in and arranged for Cornwell and her brothers, Jim and John, to be raised by Lenore and Manfred Saunders, who had recently returned from Africa.<ref name="terror" /> Marilyn Daniels, suffering from severe depression, was hospitalized. Cornwell turned to [[Ruth Bell Graham]] as an authority figure, and it was she who noticed that Cornwell's talent lay in writing and encouraged her literary efforts. A bright student, a capable cartoonist, and a talented athlete on the tennis court, Cornwell attended [[King University|King College]] in [[Bristol, Tennessee]] briefly before transferring to [[Davidson College]] on a tennis scholarship (which she later rejected), from where she graduated in 1979 with a [[Bachelor of Arts|B.A.]] in [[English studies|English]].