Linda Spalding was born and raised in Kansas. She is the author of three previous novels and two acclaimed works of nonfiction, A Dark Place in the Jungle, which was short-listed for the Trillium Book Award and the Pearson Writers' Non-Fiction Prize, and Who Named the Knife. The Purchase received Canada's prestigious Governor General's Award for English-language fiction. Spalding lives in Toronto, where she is an editor of Brick magazine.