Theodore Taylor (author)

The Cay, Taylor's story of a racially prejudiced white boy stranded with a black man, has become perhaps the most beloved of his young adult novels. It took only three weeks to complete and has seen worldwide sales of around four million. Taylor based the character of the boy in his book on a childhood friend, named Phillip. "The one thing I remembered about [him] was that his mother had taught him to hate black people and to hate them with a passion," Taylor once told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In the book, the boy sheds his racist views as he learns to admire and respect the black man who had rescued him from the ocean, especially after he goes blind. For a short period of time The Cay was banned and was classified as racist.

In 1993, Taylor wrote and published the follow-up to The Cay, which he titled Timothy of the Cay. It describes the life of Timothy before his encounter with Phillip Enright, the narrator of The Cay, and what happened to Phillip after he was rescued, by which time Timothy had been dead for almost two months.