Vicki Grove was born on December 24, 1948 in Highland, Illinois. Her parents, James and Gretchen Baum, lived in a converted one-room schoolhouse surrounded by acres of corn, clover, and soybeans. Her grandparents and great-grandparents lived in century-old homes just down the road that gave Grove an appreciation of her family's history. When she was in junior high school, her family moved away from the farm to Oklahoma, and she graduated from high school in Miami. She earned B.A. (1972) and M.A. (1973) degrees in English from Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg.

Grove has been an English teacher, a grants researcher, a preschool owner, and an educational assistant at a church. She has devoted her time, since 1983, to professional writing— first fiction and nonfiction for national magazines, and then novels for young adults.

She won the 1987 Putnam Fiction Prize and secured a contract for...