Rachel Maddux

Rachel Maddux (1912 - 1983) was an American author and screenwriter. She was born on December 12, 1912, in Wichita, Kansas, married King Baker in 1941, and died on November 19, 1983, in Erin, Tennessee. She attended the University of Wichita and graduated from Kansas University in 1934, with a degree in zoology. She began attending medical school, but had to withdraw for health reasons.

Her first story, the novella "Turnip's Blood", was published by Story magazine in 1936. The New York Times reported in 1937 that Katharine Hepburn had bought the rights to the piece. Maddux rewrote the story as "Girl in the Park" for the October 30, 1952 episode of The Ford Television Theatre. She went on to write the fantasy novel ''The Green Kingdom'' (1957), the roman a clef ''Abel's Daughter'' (1960), and another novella, ''A Walk in the Spring Rain'' (1966), which was published in German as ''Die Frau des Anderen'' (1970). ''A Walk in the Spring Rain'' was made into a 1970 movie of the same name, with Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn, written and produced by Stirling Silliphant. Neil D. Isaacs wrote about that process in ''Fiction Into Film'' (1970).

In the 1950s, Maddux had stories published in several issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, including "Final Clearance" (1956) and "Overture and Beginners" (1957). She wrote a "mental" (thematic) autobiography in 1941, published in 1991 as ''Communication'', and a collection of 28 of her stories, ''The Way Things Are'', was published posthumously in 1992.

In 1960, Maddux and her husband moved to Erin, Tennessee. While there, they became involved in fostering two abandoned siblings, and had to deal with the "misplaced pride" of the family and local residents when they tried (unsuccessfully) to adopt the children. Maddux wrote the book ''The Orchard Children'' (1977) and the television movie "Who'll Save Our Children?" (1978) about the experience. Her home in Erin was named a Literary Landmark by the American Library Association in 1998. Provided by Wikipedia