Donald Mahanay  was born in a small two room tarpaper shack in rural Beaver county in the panhandle of Oklahoma October 26, 1936 to Onah and Vernon Mahanay. Both Onah and Vernon were born in what was called Indian Territory before it became the state of Oklahoma.  Onah’s  mother and father came to this land in a covered wagon from Missouri and their first home was a cave dug in the side of a cliff. Don lived on a small ranch in Beaver county until he was six then moved to and grew up in Wichita Kansas where he was raised with three older sisters.  After high school he joined the army and was stationed in Europe. There he learned that wherever he was, there were interesting people all around.

He later married a Wichita girl and had four daughters, no sons.  Now he had five girls in his life that he loved and thought the world of. The time that he wasn’t working he spent with his girls. All five he thought of as being strong  and intelligent young ladies. He and his family moved to Arizona where they lived thirty years. As they grew up he spent a lot of time talking and listening to them. When his four daughters left home, he learned that he thought of women as being strong and he liked to write about strong women.

The story  Eagle Woman is what he believes to be the result of  the many stories his mother told him as a child about living in Indian Territory and his early years playing on sacred burial grounds on his family ranch and hunting for flint arrowheads.  As an adult he was very fortunate to be able to spend time with one of his daughters who was the vice principal of the high school on a Navajo reservation. He became familiar with the tribal members, learning many of their beliefs and customs. He also visited the Hopi reservation and learned about some of their beliefs.

The story  Eagle Woman is of a fictional Indian Nation and their beliefs. Though the characters and the Nation are fictional, as the story progressed, both the nation and the characters became real to the author, and his belief is that this story  needs to be told.