Hamilton was born on July 13, 1957, and raised in Oak Park, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. She studied English literature at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., where she received a bachelor's degree in 1979. After graduating, Hamilton headed to New York City, where she planned to work in publishing. En route to the East coast she stopped in southeastern Wisconsin to visit a college friend employed at an apple orchard. During the late-August harvest Hamilton was recruited to help pick apples. After spending three seasons on the farm, Hamilton married Robert Willard, one of the orchard's owners. Enjoying the quiet countryside and the opportunity it gave her to write, Hamilton settled on the farm, which is near the small town of Rochester.

Hamilton's novel ‘The Book of Ruth' (1988), winner of the 1989 PEN/Hemingway Foundation award for best first novel, relates the story of an impoverished, dysfunctional family living in rural Illinois. The book frankly addresses issues of estrangement and domestic violence. Critics praised Hamilton's characterizations of the innocent and simplistic narrator Ruth, her mentally unstable husband, and her unrelentingly bitter mother. Ruth's gritty determination to prevail over the hapless circumstances of her life is a testament to the human capacity for compassion and forgiveness. Selected in 1997 for the book club of television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, ‘The Book of Ruth' became a best-seller.

Hamilton continued to write about the lives of small-town inhabitants in her second novel, ‘A Map of the World' (1994), which tells the story of Alice and Howard Goodwin, well-educated city dwellers who move to the rural Midwest to farm. Natives of the farming town treat the somewhat eccentric Goodwins as outsiders and maintain little contact with them. The family is faced with tragedy when a neighbor child drowns on their property. Riven with guilt and self-doubt, Alice Goodwin is dealt a second blow when a troubled young boy at the school where she works falsely accuses her of sexual abuse. The event, which leads to the incarceration and trial of Alice, topples the family's precarious position within the community. As the town rallies against her, Alice labors to understand the motivation of her accusers. ‘A Map of the World' was a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection and was praised by critics for its emotional depth and dexterous manipulation of point of view, evidenced by alternating first-person accounts by Alice and Howard.

Hamilton's third book, ‘The Short History of a Prince' (1998), marked a departure from her earlier books. Whereas ‘The Book of Ruth' and ‘A Map of the World' focus on the domestic lives of married, heterosexual women, ‘The Short History of a Prince' tells of a single, homosexual male. The novel employs an innovative narrative structure; it is composed of 12 alternating sections in which Hamilton draws parallels between the protagonist's life at age 15 and at age 38. Walter McCloud, a 15-year-old aspiring, but not particularly talented, ballet dancer who lives in a fictional Chicago suburb, searches for drama and elegance through art. Sensitive and intelligent at age 38, Walter hopes to come to terms with the perceived failure of his young adulthood and takes a job teaching high-school English in a small Wisconsin town. The book compassionately portrays the protagonist's struggle with loneliness and feelings of inadequacy and ultimately rewards Walter with the discovery of his true talents.