Who is bess streeter aldrich

Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. A White Bird Flying 4. Want to Read saving… Error rating book. Spring Came On Forever 4. Song of Years 4. Miss Bishop 4. The Rim of the Prairie 4. The Lieutenant's Lady 4. Mother Mason 4. Journey into Christmas and Other Stories 3. The Cutters 3. Glens Falls NY Historical Fictio The thrill of seeing her name in print, she said, led her to know she would be a writer.

She used that pseudonym, a combination of her two grandmothers' names, until Altogether, Aldrich wrote more than short stories, including "The Woman Who Was Forgotten" , which later formed the basis for her book Miss Bishop and the film Cheers for Miss Bishop Henry Award in She continued to see the short story as her forte until , when an editor challenged her to write a book.

Four days after her husband mailed off her first novel, The Rim of the Prairie , he suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage, leaving Bess with four children ranging in age from 4 to Writing was no longer an avocation, but a necessity.

All of Aldrich's books are set either in her first home area of Iowa or in the area of her subsequent home in southeastern Nebraska. The book most closely associated with Iowa is Song of Years , in which she used letters, clippings, and diaries belonging to one of the first Cedar Falls families, the Leavitts.

For some time, Harvey Leavitt had been sending Aldrich boxes of material, urging her to use what she wanted to write an Iowa book. Her story was one of six chosen from among some two thousand entries. From that time on, Aldrich wrote whenever she could find a moment between caring for her growing family and her household chores.

Indeed, she commented that, in the early days, many a story was liberally sprinkled with dishwater as she jotted down words or ideas while she worked. Aldrich's first book, Mother Mason , a compilation of short stories, was published in In May , shortly before her second book, Rim of the Prairie was published, Charles Aldrich died of a cerebral hemorrhage, leaving Bess a widow with four children ranging from four to sixteen.

Her writing now became the means of family support; with her pen she put all the children through college. Aldrich's short stories were as eagerly sought and read as her novels, and she became one of the best paid magazine writers of the time.

Aldrich also wrote several pieces on the art of writing, and these were published in The Writer. She was posthumously inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame in