Bess Streeter Aldrich, born as Bess Genevra Streeter on February 17, 1881, in Cedar Falls, Iowa, was one of eight children of Mary Streeter and James Wareham. Aldrich's writing career began in her childhood, and she won her first writing prize at the age of fourteen. By the time she graduated from high school, she had already won two magazine fiction writing contests.
After graduating from Iowa State Normal School, Aldrich became a teacher and taught in several locations in Utah before returning to Cedar Falls to earn her advanced degree in education. In 1910, Aldrich and her husband, Charles Sweetzer Aldrich, along with her sister and brother-in-law, Clara and John Cobb, bought the American Exchange Bank in Elmwood, Nebraska, and moved there with their two-month-old daughter, Bess's widowed mother, and the Cobbs. Elmwood would become the setting for many of Aldrich's short stories and books.
Aldrich's writing career spanned forty years, during which she published over 100 short stories and articles, nine novels, one novella, two books of short stories, and one omnibus. She emphasized family values and recorded accurately Midwest pioneering history in her work. Some of her notable works include "Miss Bishop," which was made into the movie "Cheers for Miss Bishop," and her short story "The Silent Stars Go By" became the television show "The Gift of Love."
Aldrich's first book, "Mother Mason," a compilation of short stories, was published in 1924. In May 1925, shortly before her second book, "Rim of the Prairie" was published, Charles Aldrich died of a cerebral hemorrhage, leaving Bess a widow with four children ranging from four to sixteen. Her writing now became the means of family support, and she put all her children through college with her pen. Aldrich's short stories were as eagerly sought and read as her novels, and she became one of the best-paid magazine writers of the time. Her work appeared in several magazines, including The American, Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal, Collier's, Cosmopolitan, and McCall's. Aldrich also wrote several pieces on the art of writing, and these were published in The Writer.
In 1934, Aldrich was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Nebraska, and in 1949 she received the Iowa Authors Outstanding Contributions to Literature Award. She was posthumously inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame in 1973.