Luke Rhinehart was born in the small town of Madrid, New York in 1941. He grew up steeped in the American West, where his father was a rancher, and he was an avid reader of adventure stories. After graduating from high school, he left home to study biology at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He spent most of his college years determined to complete the course work necessary to work at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts
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However, after five years of study he was dropped by his fifth employer because he couldn't find a job related to his advanced degree. He drifted for many years, working on boats and doing odd jobs while trying to write. When he was thirty-two years old, Rhinehart decided to hitchhike around the world with only a backpack and a book about leadership that he had written while still in college.
The journey took ten months and ended abruptly when he received a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. During the course of treatment it became clear that he would never walk again. Despite this devastating setback, Rhinehart continued to write on his typewriter.
The result was Reality Therapy: A New Way of Healing Human Problems Through Controlled Thought Reform (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1972). It became an instant cult classic and has been translated into over twenty languages. Despite being unable to leave his house for most of the next twenty years due to his illness, Rhinehart kept writing till he completed The Dice Man (Doubleday & Company, 1982).