Berriault was born in Long Beach, California, in 1926, the youngest of her Russian-Jewish immigrant parents' three children. Her father worked as an ad solicitor and a writer for trade magazines. Berriault began to write stories on her father's typewriter when she was still a child. She was, from a young age, independent and self-motivated. In an interview with Bonnie Lyons and Bill Oliver in the Literary Review, she describes transcribing passages from great literature when she was a child, "to see the words coming out of my typewriter. It was like a dream of possibilities for my own self."

The family fell on rough times in Berriault's teenage years. When they lost their house, Berriault dreamed of earning enough with her writing to buy the family a farm. Her mother began to go blind when Berriault was fourteen. Her father, whom Berriault describes to Lyons and...