Doris Shannon Garst was born on July 24, 1899, in Ironwood, Michigan, to Julius Jensen and Zenta Shannon Jensen. When she was four years old, her family moved west to Denver, Colorado. She attended Denver's public schools until her senior year of high school, when her family moved to Hood River, Oregon, where they had purchased a fruit orchard. After teaching for four years at an Oregon country school, she moved to Wyoming to accept a civil service job. In Wyoming she married Joseph Garst, an attorney whose family once owned the building that eventually became the county museum that housed the Annie Oakley memorabilia. The couple had three children.

Garst co-authored three books with her son Warren: Wild Bill Hickok, Cowboys and Cattle Trails, and Ernest Thompson Seton: Naturalist.

Concerning her prolific writing career, Garst says that she was born with the urge to write...