Tom Horton was born and raised on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; he grew up hunting, fishing, and consorting with watermen. As a reporter on Chesapeake Bay for the Baltimore Sun (1972–87), he won numerous local and national awards, including the National Wildlife Federation's Conservation Communicator of the Year, the Scripps-Howard Meeman award for best conservation series (on the Amazon jungle), and the Kenny Rogers national award for hunger reporting (on the Ethiopian famine). He is the author of Turning the Tide: Saving the Chesapeake Bay and Bay Country, a series of essays on the Chesapeake environment, which won the John Burroughs Medal.