Richard Peck was born on April 5, 1934, and grew up in Decatur, Illinois, a town that has found its way into much of Peck's fiction. Decatur appears as the Dunthorpe of Dreamland Lake (1973) an d Representing Super Doll (1974). As it may have been at the turn of the century, Decatur appears as the Bluff City of Peck's four comic supernatural adventure novels about Blossom Culp. Although dreaming of becoming a writer as he was growing up, Peck wrote no fiction until the age of thirty-seven. While in the army, however, he exercised his talents ghostwriting sermons for chaplains of various denominations.

In 1954 Peck attended the University of Exeter in England and received his B.A. degree from DePauw University in Indiana in 1955. In 1959 he earned an M.A. degree from Southern Illinois University and later, in 1960 and 1961, studied at Washington University. Initially pursuing a career...