Berriault was born on New Year's Day in 1926 in Long Beach, California, to a Russian Jewish immigrant couple. Berriault's father worked as a marble cutter and later as a writer, but he was not able to find steady work, and the family lived under precarious financial circumstances. Berriault's mother lost her sight while Berriault was a teenager, which Berriault later said influenced her writing. Berriault has spent much of her life in California, the setting for many of her works of fiction.

As a child, Berriault was an avid reader, a selfdescribed "restless spirit" who felt "confined in a classroom and yearning to be out and roaming, either in the landscape or in her own imagination." Reading satisfied this restlessness, and she began to write original stories on her father's old typewriter when she was in elementary school. She also found herself drawn to drama and...