David Eddings

Part Cherokee and born in Spokane, Washington, to George Wayne Eddings and Theone (Berge) Eddings, in 1931, Eddings grew up near Puget Sound in the City of Snohomish. After graduating from Snohomish High School in 1949, he worked for a year before majoring in speech, drama and English at junior college. Eddings displayed an early talent for drama and literature, winning a national oratorical contest, and performing the male lead in most of his drama productions. He graduated with a BA from Reed College in 1954. He wrote a novel for a thesis at Reed College before being drafted into the U.S. Army. (He had also previously served in the National Guard. ) After being discharged in 1956, Eddings attended the graduate school of the University of Washington in Seattle for four years, graduating with an MA in 1961. Eddings then worked as a purchaser for Boeing, where he met his future wife. Through most of the 1960s, Eddings worked as a lecturer at Black Hills State College in South Dakota.

The couple adopted one boy in 1966, Scott David. They adopted a younger girl between 1966 and 1969. In 1969 they lost custody of both children and each were sentenced to a year in jail from separate trials after pleading guilty to child abuse. Though the nature of the abuse, the trial and the sentencing were all extensively reported in North Dakota newspapers at the time, these details did not resurface during their successful joint career as fantasy authors, only coming to light several years after both had died.

After both served their sentences, David and Leigh Eddings moved to Denver in 1971, where David found work in a grocery store.

On January 26, 2007 it was reported that Eddings accidentally burned about a quarter of his office, next door to his house, along with his Excalibur sports car. He was flushing the fuel tank of the car with water when he lit a piece of paper and threw it into the puddle to test if it was still flammable. When asked to explain it to the firefighter he said "One word comes to mind. Dumb."

On February 28, 2007, David Eddings' wife, Leigh Eddings, who he married in 1962, died following a series of strokes that left her unable to communicate. She was 69. Eddings cared for her at home with her mother after her first stroke, which occurred three years before he finished writing The Dreamers.

Eddings resided in Carson City, Nevada, where he died of natural causes on June 2, 2009.