凱斯·唐納鬍齣生於一個愛爾蘭裔的美國傢庭，在七個孩子中排行第四，從小就覺得自己可能是個換生靈。他的第一個工作是美國藝術基金會擔任講稿撰寫人，在長達八年的工作中，凱斯·唐納鬍利用課餘時間獲得文學博士學位。

1974年他立誌以寫作為業，並花七年時間寫下瞭處女作《失竊的孩子》。

Inspired by the W.B. Yeats poem that tempts a child from home to the waters and the wild, "The Stolen Child" is a modern fairy tale narrated by the child Henry Day and his double.""On a summer night, Henry Day runs away from home and hides in a hollow tree. There he is taken by the changelings--an unaging tribe of wild children who live in darkness and in secret. They spirit him away, name him Aniday, and make him one of their own. Stuck forever as a child, Aniday grows in spirit, struggling to remember the life and family he left behind. He also seeks to understand and fit in this shadow land, as modern life encroaches upon both myth and nature. In his place, the changelings leave a double, a boy who steals Henry's life in the world. This new Henry Day must adjust to a modern culture while hiding his true identity from the Day family. But he can't hide his extraordinary talent for the piano (a skill the true Henry never displayed), and his dazzling performances prompt his father to suspect that the son he has raised is an imposter. As he ages the new Henry Day becomes haunted by vague but persistent memories of life in another time and place, of a German piano teacher and his prodigy. Of a time when he, too, had been a stolen child. Both Henry and Aniday obsessively search for who they once were before they changed places in the world. "The Stolen Child" is a classic tale of leaving childhood and the search for identity. With just the right mix of fantasy and realism, Keith Donohue has created a bedtime story for adults and a literary fable of remarkable depth and strange delights.