At the time of her death in 1938, Zona Gale's life story embodied all of the elements of the stereotypic feminist heroine of the late nineteenth century: After an idyllic childhood in a tranquil Midwestern farming village, Gale earned a graduate degree at the University of Wisconsin, worked as a newspaper reporter in Milwaukee and New York, attained some recognition as a writer of popular novels, and in 1921, earned a Pulitzer Prize for drama.