Helena Ruth France (née Henderson; 12 June 1913 – 19 August 1968) was a New Zealand librarian, poet and novelist.
France was born in Leithfield, North Canterbury, New Zealand in 1913, the daughter of Francis and Helena Henderson.
Her mother Helena was a writer of unpublished novels and plays as well as published poems and stories in the local Christchurch newspaper.
[2] The Henderson family were Catholic; France's father objected to her marriage to a non-Catholic and feigned suicide the night before the wedding.
[4] Ice Cold River is a family story set on a Canterbury farm which is cut off by floods.