Carl Deuker was born in San Francisco on August 26, 1950, and brought up in nearby Redwood City. While never a star athlete himself—"I am strictly JV material," he insists—he knows his way around a basketball court. He played the game in high school and later, as an English and science teacher in various Seattle area schools, served as coach. He is equally at home with a typewriter. After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in the early 1970s, he spent a year working for a Los Angeles newspaper. After earning his teaching certificate from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a master's degree from the University of Washington and beginning his teaching career, he wrote film and book reviews for a Seattle weekly. At present, he teaches English and physical science at the junior high level and makes...