Educated at Iowa State Normal School where she received a teaching certificate, Streeter taught school in Utah before returning to Cedar Falls to obtain an advanced degree in education. She married Charles Sweetzer Aldrich in 1907 and in 1909 they moved with their four children to Elmwood, Nebraska. She began to write regularly in 1911 and became a contributor to various periodicals such as Ladies' Home Journal, The American Magazine, McCall's and Harper's Weekly. Her stories were often built around the small towns where they had lived. She became one of America's highest paid female authors of the time. Her first novel, Mother Mason, was published in 1924. Her husband died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1925, only 52 years old, and after that Aldrich began writing to support her family. She would go on to produce 13 novels and over 200 short stories in her career. She received an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree in literature from the University of Nebraska in 1934 and was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame posthumously in 1973. She had moved to Lincoln, Nebraska in 1946 in order to be close to her daughter. She died from cancer. Her works include The Run of the Prairie (1925), The Cutters (1926), A White Bird Flying (1931), Miss Bishop (1933), Spring Came On Forever (1935), The Man Who Caught the Weather (1936), Song of Years (1939), The Drum Goes Dead (1941), The Lieutenant's Lady (1942), Journey Into Christmas (1949) and The Bess Streeter Aldrich Reader. |
