Versatile American author Bruce Brooks was acknowledged as a notable author of young adult fiction with the publication of his first novel The Moves Make the Man in 1984. Since then, his work has encompassed both fiction and nonfiction, full- length novels and collections of tales, and works for older and younger readers. His characters and settings range from a thirteen-year-old black student in the South in the 1960s to an adolescent female cello virtuoso in Washington in the 1980s to a fourteen-year-old boy from the twenty-first century who is featured in a cautionary tale about the dangers of alcoholism. Brooks's range of work marks him as a writer who does not want to be pigeonholed and who is willing to experiment with technique.

Born in 1950 in Washington, D.C., Brooks spent much of his early life with family members in both Washington, D.C...