Aren Cappella was a writer and artist who lived in the town of Sonoma in Northern California. She was an entrepreneur who owned and operated a small bakery in Sonoma with her business partner. Aren died of breast cancer in 1998 at the age of 42. Before her death she wrote this story, "First Woman." It is the story of the first woman on Earth's spiritual quest to find her place among the other animals on Earth and to discover the qualities that make her uniquely human.