Shirley Rousseau Murphy was born May 20, 1928, in Oakland, California. Her father, Otis Francis Rousseau, was a horse trainer, and her mother, Helen Hoffman Rousseau, was an artist. Her parents' occupations and interests later influenced Murphy's writing, for one will note horses throughout her fantasies and lavish, artistic descriptions of scenery that only an artist's eye could capture. Commenting on her childhood, Murphy notes:

I grew up in California with the rhythm of the sea filling my days, and the rhythm of hooves: a small child riding alone along the shore and along the back country roads. My father trained and sold horses, and I rode from the time I was five, spent every possible moment, not with other children or toys, but cleaning stalls, doing stablechores, and riding. The times when it rained too hard to ride were interludes of solitary fantasy games, of...