Ms. Walls said: “I’d come to terms with the idea that I would never fall in love. I didn’t need anybody. I had a career. I was independent. I had gay friends for intimacy.”

Her deepening friendship with Mr. Taylor, who worked with her at New York and at Esquire, spurred a change of heart. They married in 2002, and he teased the memoir out of her, bit by painful bit. The globe-traveling son of a diplomat, he was not put off by her background or the burn scars that covered her torso.

“John told me: ‘Don’t ever apologize that you have scars. They give you texture,’” she said. “That was such a revelation, that somebody would not only forgive me for what was wrong with me but see it as something to be admired.”

The two plan to stay put, though she has a soft spot for New York. “The city is like an old boyfriend with whom I amicably split,” she said.

Life on the farm has its merits. She has found the serenity there to write two more books, “Half-Broke Horses: A True Life Novel” and “The Silver Star.” She is working on a novel about a businesswoman in the 1920s.

“I know I’ll be O.K. here,” she said. “In New York, I’m not so sure. A lot of those gossip columnists, they lose their platform. Walter Winchell spent the last part of his life hanging out on street corners and handing out mimeographed columns. That was just an eye-opener for me.”

Nothing doing for Ms. Walls. “I wanted a place where I could go broke and still grow vegetables, bail water out of the creek and shoot deer,” she said. “If worse comes to worst, I’ll survive.”