Her first novel published in English, None But the Brave, A Story of Holland (1942), a work for young people, won the New York Herald Tribune Spring Book Award.
A number of her historical romances were translated into European languages, including Danish, French, Italian, and German.
The film, Kitty (1945), starred Ray Milland and Paulette Goddard in an 18th-century English setting.. All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960) was based on her book The Bixby Girls (1957).
The book explores the lives of two sisters in the World War I era, and also takes in their brother, a musician whose character seems loosely inspired by the life of Chet Baker.
While in Turin, Italy she had met and married an Italian man, Pierro Antonio Gariazzo, on December 26, 1914.