The manuscript took Kindl a full year to complete, after which she approached a local author, Athena Lord, for tips on getting published. Her first young adult novel, Owl in Love, was based on a particularly vivid dream Kindl had one night. She decided to dedicate herself to writing seriously in her thirties and quit her secretarial job in Schenectady, New York. Here she met her future husband, Paul Fredrick Roediger, a mechanical designer, with whom she has a son, Alexander. Frustrated by the slow progress of her acting career, she took a secretarial job at her father's engineering firm. She headed to New York City, where, supplementing her income as a waitress for several years, she managed to get work as a model and appeared in several commercials. Louis, Missouri, where she attended Webster College, dropping out after a few semesters to pursue her dream of acting. After graduating from high school, Kindl moved to St. Her father, Fred Kindl, worked as a mechanical engineer for his own firm in upstate New York, while her mother, Catherine, was a stay-at-home caregiver. Kindl was born on October 16, 1951, in Alplaus, New York, the youngest of four girls. Though Kindl turned to writing late in life, she has developed a reputation as a skilled, best-selling author whose works largely appeal to the unique sensibilities of maturing young female readers. Her debut novel, Owl in Love (1993), explores teenaged alienation by recounting the story of fourteen-year-old Owl Tycho, a shapeshifter who takes the form of an owl at night.

Her works, which often have thematic origins in classical mythology and fairy tales, address a variety of female-oriented adolescent issues, such as body image, displacement, and social anxieties.

Kindl has, in the space of a decade, become a well-respected author of young adult novels, plumbing themes from alienation to sibling rivalry and coming-of-age in fanciful yet oddly realistic storylines. The following entry presents an overview of Kindl's career through 2003.

Warm Hearts by Patrice M. Foster