Mary Roberts Rinehart was a prolific writer of American westerns. She was born in 1876 and grew up in the small town of Monroe, Michigan. In 1901 she married a minister, Robert K. Rinehart, whose surname she inherited
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The couple moved to Chicago, where she wrote for newspapers and became known as an editor. In 1908 Mary Rinehart published her first novel, The Deluge, which was soon followed by other books such as Dark Blue and Bright Red. The Way of Escape (1911), an anti-war novel, was particularly popular—it sold 100,000 copies in its first year alone and went into several printings.
Her books were highly successful and encouraged the establishment of writers' groups and writers' clubs. Mary Roberts Rinehart died in 1941 at age seventy-nine. She has been referred to as "the Ella Wheeler Wilcox of her day."