Everett S. Allen was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1916. He moved to Martha's Vineyard when he was eight years old. After graduating from Tisbury High School, he attended Tabor Academy and Middlebury College. He was hired as a waterfront reporter by the New Bedford Standard-Times on the day before the hurricane of 1938, which became the subject for his book A Wind to Shake the World. After enlisting in the US Navy, where he served in Europe and participated in D-Day, he returned to the Standard-Times, where he worked until his retirement in 1979. The author of seven books, Allen died in 1990.