Author in “World Authors 1900-1950”
Bess Streeter was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa. After graduating from Iowa State Normal School, she taught school at several locations in the west, later returning to Cedar Falls to earn an advanced degree in education. A writer since early childhood, she won a writing contest at age fourteen and another at seventeen.
In 1906, she married Charles Aldrich. They moved to Elmwood, Nebraska, where Charles, Bess, her widowed mother, and family friends invested and purchased a bank. They had four children–Mary, Robert, Charles and James.
Aldrich began writing more regularly in 1911 when the Ladies’ Home Journal advertised a fiction contest, which she entered and won. She went on to become one of the highest-paid women writers of the period. Her stories often concerned Midwestern pioneer history and were very popular with teenage girls and young women.
Full Wikipedia entry.
Bess Streeter Aldrich Foundation Web Site.
Major works:
A Lantern in Her Hand
Spring Came on Forever
Song of Years
How Far is it to Hollywood?
In a short story by Aldrich called, “How Far is it to Hollywood” two young girls are planning on running away to Hollywood. The girls refer to each other as Mae West and Greta Garbo.
Opening line of the story: Greta Garbo and Mae West sat on the back fence and swung their legs over the tops of the milkweeds and the boxes of empty tin cans.
The girls gathered up items to sell to finance their trip to Hollywood. This scene in the story has one of my favorite lines.
“When they met and took an inventory of resources, Miss West had accumulated a small glass of jelly, some caps for a toy gun and a package of radish seeds. Miss Garbo’s plunder consisted of a pair of Louise’s silk hose, a card of buttons and the current number of her father’s railroad magazine. Each apologized faintly for the humble characteristics of the contributed merchandise, but hope springs eternal, and one can never tell just what a fickle public craves.”
If I see something odd at the store I love to use the line, “You never know what a fickle public craves.”