Walter Dumaux Edmonds was born in Boonville, New York, and began a longtime association with Harvard University when he entered Choate Rosemary Hall in 1919. He originally intended to study chemical engineering, but he became more interested in writing and worked as managing editor of the campus literary magazine. He received an A.B. in 1926. In 1929, he published his first novel, Rome Haul, about the Erie Canal. In 1930, he married Eleanor Stetson. His novel Drums Along the Mohawk (1936) was on the bestseller list for two years, second to Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind for part of that time. In 1942 he won the Newbery Medal for his novel The Matchlock Gun (1941). When his wife died in 1956, he married Katherine Howe Baker Carr. In 1976 he was awarded the National Book Award for Children's Literature his novel Bert Breen's Barn (1975). Over the course of his career, he published 34 books, many for children.