Jean Guttery was born in Hankow, China, on November 16, 1915. Her parents, Arthur and Myrtle Guttery, were missionaries for the Young Men's Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.). Around 1928, she and her family left China to escape the warfare following the revolution that removed the old monarchy and replaced it with a fragile civilian government. While in China, Jean kept a notebook of her thoughts and observations that later served as a basis for writing about China, writings that reveal a nostalgia for China.

After she graduated from Wheaton College in 1937, Jean took a job with an advertising agency in New York, but left to work for a textbook publisher, Silver Burdett Company. She married Michael Fritz on November 1, 1941. Soon after, he was called to You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton? 483 military service and sent to San Francisco after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and...