Edward Bloor grew up in Trenton, New Jersey. While he was growing up he played soccer with kids from a diverse array of ethnic backgrounds, and he experienced the way that the game brought kids together. Later he became a high school teacher in Florida. It was while he was there that he came up with the idea for his first novel, Tangerine. Many of the events and issues in Tangerine were based on things that were happening around him in Florida. Bloor has written five other novels: Crusader; Story Time; London Calling; Taken; Memory Lane; and A Plague Year. A seventh novel, Summer of Smoke, is forthcoming.