Thomas Savage was born in 1915 in Salt Lake City. His literary career spans five decades and thirteen novels, most notably The Power of the Dog (1967), named "the year's best novel" by the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Sheep Queen (originally published in 1977 under the title I Heard My Sister Speak My Name). His most recent novel, The Corner of Rife and Pacific, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the fifteen best novels of 1988. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980.