She graduated from Berwick Academy and then matriculated to Bates College, the first person in her family to pursue higher education.
Herbert Carroll's career and pursuits of various degrees took the couple all over America including Massachusetts, Chicago, Minneapolis and Manhattan.
She worked tirelessly, writing short stories, regular advice columns and her novels Cockatoo (1929) and Landspell (1930).
[7] It was a blockbuster success and the second best selling novel of 1933 according to Publishers Weekly, second only to Hervey Allen's Anthony Adverse and outselling such well-remembered books as Lloyd C. Douglas's Magnificent Obsession and Sinclair Lewis's Ann Vickers.
The only other film adaption of any of her work was her story "Kristi," which was made into an episode of Jane Wyman's 1950s anthology television series Fireside Theatre.
The money from As the Earth Turns, along with her husband's job at the University of New Hampshire, allowed her to return to her hometown and build a home on the land of her family in South Berwick.
During summers she allowed visitors to come to her Maine home to visit, go on guided tours of Dunnybrook, and get books signed.
As Carroll was in her nineties at this point, it took supreme efforts on her part and could be considered the culminating event of a long career.