Henry Hooker & Co., designers and builders of high grade carriages, New Haven, Connecticut

But Lizzie had aspirations of her own. She turned a blind eye to George’s affairs and focused instead on her new plan: to become a writer. Soon, the ledger in which she recorded her literary submissions and sales read like a litany of her own family’s emotional and financial ups and downs. Lizzie the woman became Betty Smith the writer, fighting her way into college courses against school regulations that banned students without a high school diploma, writing plays that reflected the dreams of the poor and working classes, even winning the prestigious Avery Hopwood Award for dramatic writing in 1930. But success couldn’t keep Betty’s family life from spinning quickly out of her control. Family crises prevailed, crowned by the deaths of Betty’s stepfather and George’s parents. The distant couple finally uprooted their family, moving east to Amherst, Massachusetts, and then to New Haven, Connecticut, in an uneasy and short-lived reconciliation. The stagnation and fear of her marriage were belied by her professional accomplishments: though she had never officially completed high school, Betty’s drama prize allowed her to enroll in graduate studies at Yale ...»