Keith Carlton Robertson was born on May 9, 1914, in Dows, a small town on the Iowa River in northern Iowa.

The son of a merchant who often moved, Robertson grew up on farms and in small towns in five different states in the central United States. He set aside a boyhood interest in writing to join the U.S. Navy in 1931.

Robertson served as a radioman on a destroyer for two years. He then entered the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating with a bachelor of science degree. Robertson worked as a civilian refrigeration engineer until the outbreak of war in 1941. An officer on destroyers in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, he served until World War II ended in 1945, when he retired into the reserves with the rank of captain.

He found a job as a salesman for a children's book publisher and married Elizabeth...