John Bellairs was born on January 17, 1938, in Marshall, Michigan, a small, picturesque central Michigan town that has endeavored to sustain its heritage by preserving its magnificent nineteenth-century commercial and private buildings. Bellairs, whose father managed a saloon on Marshall's main street, attended the local Catholic school. A short, chubby child, he lacked the athletic ability to join his schoolmates in playground sports and turned instead to reading encyclopedias, history books, and novels. He would later use his childhood experiences as material for his novels. He left Marshall to attend Notre Dame University, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1959; he earned a master's degree at the University of Chicago in 1960 and began working on his doctorate. While doing so, he accepted a series of teaching appointments that took him to Minnesota, Illinois, and finally Massachusetts, where he currently resides.

During this time, he began...