Burke, James Lee

James Lee Burke is an American author of Irish descent born in Houston, Texas, and brought up on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast. His father died in a road accident when James Lee Burke was eighteen years old. Burke enrolled at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, in 1955 and transferred to the University of Missouri, Columbia, in 1957, where he read journalism and graduated with a B.A. in English in 1958 and an M.A. in 1960. It was also where he med Pearl Pai Chu, whose parents had fled China after the Communist takeover. The couple were married in 1960 and had four children. Their youngest daughter, Alafair, (born in 1969) is also an acclaimed crime writer.