Dorothy Baker was born in Montana and grew up in California. Her first novel, Young Man with a Horn, based on the life of the white jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke, won a Houghton Mifflin Literature Fellowship and was made into a 1950 film starring Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, and Kirk Douglas. After receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1942, Baker wrote three other novels: Trio, Our Gifted Son and Cassandra at the Wedding.
