A former librarian, historian and reviewer, Pat Jacobs has studied at the University of Western Australia. She began writing in 1978.
Jacobs has spent time with her husband and three children in the farming area of southern Western Australia, and has also been involved with a family business that operates in the north-west part of the state.
In 1990, Fremantle Arts Centre Press published Mister Neville, Jacobs' biography of A. O. Neville, Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, 1915-1940.