In 1865, the family relocated to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the two girls received a combination of public school education and homeschooling.

[4][5] Their father, a Union Army colonel during the American Civil War, was an editor for the Chattanooga Times newspaper from 1872 to 1903.

[11][12] In 1906, Cooke, her sister and her two daughters, moved to Helicon Home Colony, an experimental community formed by author Upton Sinclair in Englewood, New Jersey.

[15] A satirical commentator from the Los Angeles Times placed the sisters in the "social faction" known as the "Eminently Respectables".

In 1910, she also wrote The Power and the Glory, a novel exploring feminist themes and the challenging working conditions in the cotton mills of the Appalachian region.

[20] In May 1914, the Los Angeles Times and the Oakland Tribune reported that Alice had been intentionally poisoned at her home to steal her diamonds and cash.