Susan Ertz

Susan Ertz was an Anglo-American writer, known for her "sentimental tales of genteel life in the country." She was born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England to American parents Charles and Mary Ertz. She moved back and forth between both countries during her childhood but chose to live in England when she was 18. She married British Army soldier, Major John Ronald McCrindle in London in 1932.
A common theme running through her work involves a female character "who is thrust out on her own from a sheltered environment into a vaguely hostile external world with which she is initially unprepared to cope. Her coming to terms with this hostile world provides the fictional interest of novels." The Proselyte, the story of a London woman who marries a Mormon missionary and moves with him to Utah, was one of her most highly praised books. Ertz's Woman Alive is a science fiction novel set after all women other than the titular heroine have perished in a plague.
One of her later works, In the Cool of the Day, was the source of an eponymous movie in 1963, starring Jane Fonda, Peter Finch, and Angela Lansbury.

Works

Madame Claire 1923
Nina 1924
After Noon 1926
The Wind of Complication 1927
Now East, Now West 1927
The Milky Way 1929
The Story of Julian 1931
The Proselyte 1933
Now We Set Out 1935
Woman Alive, But Now Dead 1935 also published as Woman Alive
No Hearts to Break 1937
Black, White and Caroline 1938
Big Frogs and Little Frogs 1939
One Fight More 1939
Anger in the Sky 1943
Mary Hellam 1947
The Prodigal Heart 1950
The Undefended Gate 1953
Charmed Circle 1956
In the Cool of the Day 1960
Summer's Lease 1972
The Philosopher's Daughter 1976