Al Sprague, wrote and illustrated the first draft of The Mahogany Tree to entertain his seventh-grade English students. He based the story on his own experiences growing up in Panama and fishing with the real Ole Man any chance he could get. Al's students still remember him reading the story aloud to them as a reward for doing well on their English tests. Many years later, his daughter Dagny took the draft and rewrote it, inserting the illustrations and creating a readable edition. The Spragues showed the draft to Pat Alvarado, publisher of Piggy Press, who saw its potential as an English-Spanish novel.

Dagny Sprague, spent her earliest years in the Republic of Panama, where she learned a love of art and nature from her artist father and her love of books and reading from her teacher mother. She spent her school years in Florida and Virginia, attending Old Dominion University and earning a bachelor's degree cum laude in English. She then went on to teach in Ohio for a year before moving to New Orleans to work as a waitress and bartender and pursue her interest in writing.