Sylvester Boyd Jr. is a native of Chicago, Illinois. At the age of fifteen, he and his family moved from Chicago’s south-side public housing projects to Allegan, Michigan where he later graduated in 1963 from Allegan High School. He has attended African American, mixed race and predominately white schools; typically living in diverse communities. After receiving an Associate in Arts Degree at Kennedy King College, he attended Chicago State University acquiring a Bachelor of Arts degree in geography, with a minor in history.

Mr. Boyd worked more than a decade for a major airline at Chicago’s O’Hare Field. In 1981, he founded one of the largest minority owned advertising specialty companies in southwest Michigan; selling products to many major corporations, businesses, colleges and universities. He has traveled extensively throughout the world.Being semi-retired, Mr. Boyd has enjoyed the opportunity to work as a movie extra, motivational speaker and substitute teacher for Chicago Public Schools. The Road from Money is his first novel; based on the true stories told to him by several family members over the years. He has woven both fact and fiction into a dynamic portrayal of historical events of the era; including music, inventions and the journey of a young Negro girl and her family living under the trying times of Jim Crow in the South.