Carol Antoinette Peacock grew up in Maryland, in a suburb outside of Washington D.C. She is the eldest of three children in a family with a love for books. Carol aspired to be a writer since she was eleven, and she is now a practicing psychologist and author of six books. She earned a BA at Cornell University, a Master's of Social Work from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Psychology at Boston College.

Her first book, Hand Me Down Dreams (Schocken, 1981), was praised in the New York Times Book Review and was optioned for CBS film rights. The book is an account of her work with four troubled adolescent girls who are able to break family patterns and create new lives for themselves. Her following work, Sugar Was My Best Food: Diabetes and Me (Whitman, 1998), tells the story of how a boy manages life with diabetes.