Ruth Suckow (1892 - 1960)

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"She loved being able to know that country was all around her and that at any moment she could reach it... and stand and let great sunny silence sink into her whole being, not just into her mind..."*

As a child, Suckow accompanied her father on his many pastoral calls. Her father, who traveled by bicycle, would place her in a specially crafted seat attached to the handlebars. From her little perch, she was able to observe Iowa towns and the countryside, gathering details that later would appear in her fiction.**

She was born in Hawarden, Iowa. The daughter of a Congregationalist minister, she and her family moved frequently between parsonages. Suckow lived in many Iowa towns: Algona, Fort Dodge, Manchester, Grinnell, Davenport, Earlville, and Cedar Falls. In 1910, she enrolled at Grinnell College but left after three years to attend the Curry School of Expression in Boston. Later, she attended the University of Denver where she completed advanced studies in English.

In all, she published eight novels, three volumes of short stories, and many essays and reviews. Her writings celebrate American life as experienced in small communities and rural places. Suckow's works include The Folks (1934), New Hope (1942), and The John Wood Case (1957). The Kramer Girls explores the feminine struggle for self-realization.

* The Kramer Girls (Alfred A. Knopf, 1929)

** Daly, Ellen Martin. "Foreword" in New Hope by Ruth Suckow. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1998.