Alice Adams was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on August 14, 1926, the only child of Nicholas Barney and Agatha Erskine. Adams was reared in North Carolina, where her father was a professor of Spanish. Her early years were troubled due to a strained relationship with her mother and the dissolution of her parents' marriage. Upon completing high school, she enrolled in Radcliffe College, where she pursued her interest in writing. She graduated in 1946 and went to work briefly for a New York publisher. The following year, she married Mark Linenthal, Jr. The newlyweds then spent a year in Paris, where Linenthal studied before accepting a teaching position in California in 1948. In 1951, the couple had their only child, Peter. Unfortunately, the marriage was unhappy, and Adams and her husband divorced in 1958.

After the divorce, Adams struggledin several secretarial jobs and continued to write. In 1959, her first published story, "Winter...