Pat Gantz lives with her husband, Ken, in Prescott, Arizona. As a child, Pat was the proverbial bookworm and developed a fondness for historical fiction. This love of reading later extended to collecting books from the local town's bookstores and museums during her travels. In visiting seaport museums across the country, in Nova Scotia, and in Australia, she found something amiss, a lack of historical fiction during the Age of Sail for middle-grade readers. Inspired by tall mast ships that she explored and sailed when these ships were docked at various seaports, Pat embarked on the imaginary voyages that turned into stories about Sailing on the High Seas in the 1780s.