Tod Davies is the author of A Diary of Cooking with What You’ve Got. Inspired by the work she did with teenagers in a poor neighborhood in England, Ms. Davies wrote Snotty Saves the Day, her first book of fiction. Unsurprisingly, her attitude toward literature is the same as her attitude toward cooking: It’s all about working with what you have to find new ways old looking and new ways of being, and in doing so, to discover the best of our humanity and work toward a better world. Ms. Davies now lives with her husband Alex and her two dogs, in the alpine valley of Colestin, Oregon, surrounded by a mountain forest where this manuscript was discovered.