David L. Robbins Biography
David L. Robbins was born in Richmond, Virginia, on March 10, 1954. He grew up in
Sandston, a small town east of Richmond out by the airport, for his father was
among the first to sit behind the new radar scope in the air traffic control
tower. Both his parents, Sam and Carol, were veterans of WWII. Sam saw action in
the Pacific, especially at Pearl Harbor.
In 1976, David graduated from the College of
William & Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia, with a B.A. in Theater and Speech. He
didn’t know what to do for a living, having little real theatrical talents, so
he decided to attend what he call the “great catch-basin of unfocused
over-achievers,” law school. He received his Juris Doctorate at William and Mary
in 1980. Robbins practiced environmental law in Columbia, S.C. for a year to the
day (his father demanded back the money for law school if David practiced for
less than one year – he quit two weeks before the anniversary but got Sam to
agree that two weeks vacation he’d accumulated could be included) before turning
his energy to a career as a freelance writer in 1981. He began writing fiction
in 1990.
Robbins has published five novels: Souls
To Keep, a cosmic love story (published by HarperCollins in 1998); War
Of The Rats, set during the battle of Stalingrad (published by Bantam in
1999); The End of War, about the fall of Berlin at the end of WWII
(Bantam in 2000); Scorched Earth, placed in the American South, about a
church burning and contemporary racism (Bantam, 2002); Last Citadel,
about the great tank battle of Kursk on the Eastern Front of WWII (Bantam in
2003), and Liberation Road, a tale of the battle for France in WWII
told through the perspectives of two minorities in the U.S. Army, a black truck
driver and a rabbi chaplain;The Assassins Gallery, an alternate history political thriller
supposing the assassination of FDR; and The Betrayal Game, a follow-up to The Assassins Gallery, set in Havana during the dangerous days leading up to the Bay of Pigs invasion, detailing the CIA’s attempts to kill Fidel Castro.
The audio version of War Of The Rats
was nominated for an Audie, as one of the top three unabridged novels of 2000.
His books have appeared on the NY Times Bestseller lists several times.
Robbins is an accomplished guitarist, playing
blues for years, but now he studies Latin classical. At six feet six inches
tall, he stays active with his sailboat, shooting sporting clays, weightlifting,
traveling to research his novels, and as founder and board member of the James
River Writers, a non-profit group in his hometown of Richmond that helps
aspiring writers and students work and learn together as a writing community. He
resides in Richmond.
This biography was last updated on 11/18/2009.
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