Grew up in the French Quarter of New Orleans where her father started
Lafitte's, a well-known café and bar on Bourbon Street, frequented by
such prolific personalities as Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote.
All four of her grandparents were teachers, and Grace herself taught at
an academy for black teen dropouts for a time.
Has two daughters. One, Marion Lane, is a painter who works often in collaboration with her mother. The two have hand crafted fine art boxes for ArtHaus, a Los Angeles gallery.
One of four children of Roger Thomas Caplinger and Marion Grace (Zabriskie) Caplinger. Her mother had distant Polish ancestry.