Long before she was the Black Dahlia, she was an average girl who coughed through Massachusetts winters and dreamily stared at the sky as if it could grant her a special wish. She was always a girl who wanted something more, something bigger, something better.  Elizabeth Short was born in 1924 outside of Boston, the third of five daughters in a house filled with tension and disappointment. Her father’s business, building miniature golf courses, collapsed during the Great Depression. And then one morning, his car was found by a bridge, and the police thought it was suicide: Phoebe Short, Elizabeth’s mother, knew otherwise. What she was left with were five mouths to feed and no money to do it. Elizabeth was a delicate child.  Pale, thin, with a weak immune system that had a broken filter. Every night, she slept propped on pillows, so her inflamed lungs wouldn’t become filled with fluid, cutting off her airways, making it impossible for her to breathe. Her mother religiously rubb...