She fell down the stairs in her school when she was a teenager. As a result, she was confined to a wheel chair for most of her life.
During her life, the wheelchair-bound V. C. never wed. Her books were
her children.
After her death in 1986, horror author Andrew Neiderman was hired to continue writing books under the V.C. Andrews name. She had left outlines for a handful of books, but all the work was Niederman's.
When her father died in the late '60s, she and her mother moved back to Virginia to be close to her brother.
Covers for her books "Flowers in the Attic", "Petals on the Wind" and
"If There Be Thorns" were created by Gillian Hills.
She was the daughter of Lillian Lilnora (Parker), a telephone operator, and William Henry Andrews, a tool-and-die maker.