Susan Ertz was a British fiction writer and novelist, known for her "sentimental tales of genteel

Landed gentry

Landed gentry is a traditional British social class, consisting of land owners who could live entirely off rental income. Often they worked only in an administrative capacity looking after the management of their own lands....

 life in the country." She was born in Walton-on-Thames

Walton-on-Thames

Walton-on-Thames is a town in the Elmbridge borough of Surrey in South East England. The town is located south west of Charing Cross and is between the towns of Weybridge and Molesey. It is situated on the River Thames between Sunbury Lock and Shepperton Lock.- History :The name "Walton" is...

, Surrey, England to American parents Charles and Mary Ertz. She moved back and forth between both countries during her childhood but chose to live in the UK when she was 18. She married British Army officer

Officer (armed forces)

An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position...

 Major John Ronald McCrindle, British barrister; in London in 1932.

A common theme running through her work involves a female character "who is thrust out on her own from a sheltered environment into a vaguely hostile external world with which she is initially unprepared to cope. Her coming to terms with this hostile world provides the fictional interest of [her] novels." One of her most highly praised books was The Proselyte, the story of a London woman who marries a Mormon

Mormon

The term Mormon most commonly denotes an adherent, practitioner, follower, or constituent of Mormonism, which is the largest branch of the Latter Day Saint movement in restorationist Christianity...

 missionary

Missionary

A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...

 and moves with him to Utah

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

.

One of her later works, In the Cool of the Day, was the source of an eponymous movie

In the Cool of the Day

In the Cool of the Day is a 1963, Metrocolor, American romantic drama film directed by Robert Stevens and starring Peter Finch, Jane Fonda, Angela Lansbury, Nigel Davenport, and John Le Mesurier.-Plot:...

 in 1963, starring Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...

, Peter Finch

Peter Finch

Peter Finch was a British-born Australian actor. He is best remembered for his role as "crazed" television anchorman Howard Beale in the film Network, which earned him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor, his fifth Best Actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and a...

, and Angela Lansbury

Angela Lansbury

Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...

.

A well known quote from Anger in the Sky is "Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

Works

• Madame Claire 1923
• Nina 1924
• After Noon 1926
• The Wind of Complication (short stories) 1927
• Now East, Now West 1927
• The Milky Way 1929 (under the name, The Galaxy, this book was on the U.S. best seller fiction list for 1929.)
• The Story of Julian 1931
• The Proselyte 1933
• Now We Burn 1935
• Woman Alive, But Now Dead 1935
• No Hearts to Break 1937
• Black, White and Caroline 1938
• Big Frogs and Little Frogs (short stories) 1939
• One Fight More 1939
• Anger in the Sky 1943
• Mary Hellam 1947
• The Prodigal Heart 1950
• The Undefended Gate 1953 (published in the U.S. as Invitation to Folly)
• Charmed Circle 1956
• In the Cool of the Day 1960
• Week Long Summer's Lease 1972
• The Philosopher's Daughter 1976