author
Margaret Wilson
1882–1973
Best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Able McLaughlins, this American writer drew on Midwestern life, faith, and community to create warm, deeply human fiction. Her work also reflected years spent in missionary service abroad, giving her novels a wider sense of place and purpose.
2 Audiobooks
The painted room
by Margaret Wilson
The Able McLaughlins
by Margaret Wilson
About the author
Born in Traer, Iowa, in 1882, Margaret Wilhelmina Wilson became an American novelist whose reputation was secured when The Able McLaughlins won the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. She grew up in the Midwest, and that background shaped the rural settings and strong community ties that appear in much of her fiction.
Before and alongside her writing life, she served as a missionary with the United Presbyterian Church. That experience broadened the world behind her books and helped give her stories a mix of domestic detail, moral seriousness, and sympathy for ordinary people.
Wilson continued to write novels for many years and later lived in England, where she died in 1973. She is remembered most for fiction that combines regional texture with emotional warmth, especially in stories centered on family, endurance, and everyday lives.