[2] While she was a student at Whitefish High School, she began to write professionally, working as a newspaper stringer for The Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana.
[4][5] Her writing was temporarily sidetracked by World War II, when she went to work for the Air Warden Service.
These were often based on interviews with Western old-timers, Native Americans, and characters she met during her tenure as secretary and researcher for the Montana Historical Society.
In 1957, the Western Writers of America gave her its highest award, the Spur Award, for "Lost Sister", a short story in The Hanging Tree collection, that deals with the reintegration into white settler society of Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been kidnapped by Comanche as a child.
In 2005, a 30-minute documentary film was made of her life by Sue Hart of Montana State University in Billings.