Although rarely read today, Fannie Hurst was one of America's most popular, prolific, and well-paid fiction writers of the 1920s and 1930s. The author of eighteen novels in addition to hundreds of short stories, Hurst wrote sentimental but vivid accounts of America's downtrodden. Her works have been translated into eighteen languages and adapted for the screen, television, and theater.

Hurst was born on 19 October 1889 in Hamilton, Ohio, into a family of German-Jewish background. She was raised in St. Louis, the only child of Samuel and Rose Koppel Hurst, old-fashioned parents who were chagrined by their daughter's peculiar vocation. A thick-set, over-dressed girl, she found herself ill-suited to St. Louis's private and public schools. Nevertheless, she continued her education at Washington University, where she persevered in her writing with much endurance and some success. She graduated in 1909.

Hurst began submitting stories to the Saturday Evening Post when she was...