Editing MacKinlay Kantor (section)

==Early life and education==
Kantor was born and grew up in [[Webster City, Iowa]], with his older sister, Virginia.  His mother, Effie (McKinlay) Kantor, worked as the editor of the ''Webster City Daily News'' during part of his childhood.  His father, John Martin Kantor, was a native-born [[History of the Jews in Sweden|Swedish Jew]] descended from "a long line of [[rabbis]], who posed as a Protestant clergyman".<ref>{{cite news|isbn=0070332762 |title=Review of Tim Kantor, 'My Father's Voice: MacKinlay Kantor Long Remembered' |work=[[Publishers Weekly]]|last1=Kantor |first1=Tim |year=1988 }}</ref> His mother was of English, Irish, Scottish, and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.<ref>{{cite book| title=Three Great Novels of the Civil War| url= https://books.google.com/books?id=7wW4D4AI884C&q=young+woman+of+mixed+Scottish,+English,+Irish+and+Pennsylvania+Dutch | author=Michael Shaara|publisher=Wings Books|date=1994| isbn= 9780517121962 }}</ref> (Later, MacKinlay Kantor wrote an unpublished novel called ''Half Jew''.)<ref name=Apostolou>{{cite news|url=http://www.mysteryfile.com/Kantor/Crime_Fiction.html|author=Apostolou, John|title=MacKinlay Kantor|work=The Armchair Detective|date=Spring 1997|access-date=October 17, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110601003618/http://www.mysteryfile.com/Kantor/Crime_Fiction.html|archive-date=June 1, 2011|url-status=dead}} republished on ''Mystery File''</ref> 

Kantor's father had trouble keeping jobs and abandoned the family before Kantor was born. His mother returned to her parents in Webster City, Mr. and Mrs. Adam McKinlay, to live at their home with her children.<ref name=Nass>{{cite web|url= http://showcase.netins.net/web/marjned/kantor.html|title= MacKinlay Kantor - Pulitzer Prize Winner|author= Nass, Martin E.|format= Archived at the website of Martin E. "Ed" Nass|date= October 29, 1999|work= Daily Freeman-Journal, Millennium Edition|access-date= June 27, 2010|url-status= dead|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100820152117/http://showcase.netins.net/web/marjned/kantor.html|archive-date= August 20, 2010}}</ref>

As a child, the boy started using his middle name McKinlay as his given name.  He changed its spelling, adding an "a", because he thought it sounded more Scottish, and chose to be called "Mack" or MacKinlay.  He attended the local schools and described the [[Kendall Young Public Library]] as his "university".  Kantor won a writing contest with his first story, "Purple".<ref name=Nass/>