Kathrene Sutherland Gedney Pinkerton (1887–1967)

Kathrene Pinkerton, née Gedney, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1909, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a BA degree, and went on to graduate work at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. She spent her early career in social work focused on public health issues such as tuberculosis outbreaks in rural areas. In 1911, she married Robert E. Pinkerton, a newspaper writer. With the proceeds of a novelette they wrote together, the couple traveled to the wilds of northern Ontario and built a small cabin eight miles from the nearest village, which could only be reached by canoe in summer and by dogsled in winter. There they settled down to their writing, at first selling articles on camping to outdoor magazines. They only emerged from the back country briefly for the birth of their daughter.

In 1917, the family moved back to the USA and traveled extensively by auto, living in the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevadas, and on the mesas of the Southwest. In 1924, they began living aboard a 50-foot boat cruising the coasts of British Columbia and Alaska. During this time, Kathrene began to focus on her independent writing, including newspaper and magazine articles, adult and juvenile fiction; however, she's best known for her autobiographical books, Wilderness Wife (1939), Three's a Crew (1940), and Two Ends to Our Shoestring (1941).