Born in England on September 15, 1890, Agatha Christie grew up well off with her wealthy parents, Frederick and Clara, in a town called Ashfield. She grew up in a large house with two siblings who were significantly older than her, so she was left to play by herself most of the time, which is where her creative imagination first blossomed. Christie had little education because she wasn’t permitted to attend school, so her parents homeschooled her. When being taught by her mother, she would often read thrillers and children’s stories, which she took an interest in. After running into financial problems, her family rented out the Ashville home and spent time in France, where Christie began to learn French and found a love for traveling. At 18, she began to write short stories for fun, and a family friend and author gave her constructive advice which set off her confidence in her work. Some time later, she met Archibald Christie at a party and a couple of months later they were married, but her husband was sent to fight in World War I, so Agatha decided to work as a nurse. While being a nurse, she trained as a pharmacist and began to write her first detective story, which would be the beginning of a very fortunate future. 

Throughout her life, Christie experienced many hardships that would shape her as an author and inspire her work. At only 11, her father passed away and left his children with only their mother and very little money. As a result, she became very close to her mother. However, the most troubling time of her life was in the 1920s, which was when her mother, who she became devoted to, passed away from illness. Shortly after her mother’s death, her then husband Archibald had fallen in love with another woman. These events sent Christie into a severe depression and, even with the pain, she finished her novel, The Mystery of the Blue Train. At one point, her depression seized her mind and drove her to thoughts of suicide, which she acted upon and attempted to drive her car into a quarry, but failed and instead got into a collision. This collision resulted in a case of amnesia, and she accidentally formed a new identity while staying in hotels in the area. She sincerely did not believe that she could be Agatha Christie, whom she was seeing pictures of in the paper reporting her missing. Finally, her family found her and got her help from neurologists to return her memories. Christie later used this traumatic experience to create a novel titled, Giant’s Bread, about a man who lost his memory during war. The setting in this novel was set up accurately because of her experience as a nurse in World War I and later in World War II. During this time she was met by many soldiers with gruesome wounds that she had to nurse back to health. It was speculated that her ability to write about detailed killings and murders came from her gory and traumatizing experience as a nurse dealing with severely wounded soldiers. Agatha Christie perfectly demonstrates how literature can be used to express traumatic memories and process any pain that may come with it.