Thomas Sanchez spent his youth in northern California, where he began his first novel, Rabbit Boss, on a cattle ranch at the age of 21. One year later, he received a master's degree from San Francisco State University. Rabbit Boss, a hundred-year saga of a California-Nevada Indian tribe, was completed when Sanchez was 27. After publishing a second novel, Zoot-Suit Murders, in the late 1970s, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his third novel, which became Mile Zero, written during the 1980s on the island of Key West. Sanchez divides his time between California and Florida.