In 1932, on August 19, Barbara Wersba was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her paternal grandfather was a Russian Jew who immigrated to the United States at the turn of the century, winding up in Harlem, when Harlem was a white middle-class neighborhood. While the family grew prosperous, they still found themselves the subjects of anti-Semitic attitudes. Wersba's father married a woman from Florida outside the Jewish faith, and the two had a long but vitriolic marriage. The prejudices against the Jewish religion, and Wersba's parent's fights, have had a large influence on the empathy she feels toward her characters.

As a child, Wersba often played by herself. She dressed somberly, and spent her days daydreaming, writing poetry, and making up plays for her dolls to perform. She dreamed of becoming a poet, or a dancer, or an actress—anything to take her away from the...