Saylor D Smith grew up in the small town of Lyons in the northeast comer of the state of Nebraska. From the late 1940s until 1958 he completed his public education while pursuing his dream of playing professional baseball. In 1960 he moved to California to complete his college education. He earned his teaching credential and began a thirty-year career as a high school English teacher in California and Oregon. He and his wife Karen Ziros-Smith live in Eugene, Oregon; he is the author of four other works, Serpent's Tooth, Stealing First, A Little Catch, Whistling on the Stair and a young person's novel, The Lemonade Gang and the Mysterious Stranger (co-authored with his daughter Evynne).