Marian Kent Hurd

Born in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1877, Marian Kent Hurd McNeely grew up in a family that encouraged learning and public life. She wrote a newspaper column from 1903 to 1906, spent a year in Italy, and later married Lee McNeely in 1910.

For about two years, the couple lived on a homestead near the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. That experience became the spark for The Jumping-Off Place (1929), a children's novel that won a Newbery Honor in 1930.

She also published short stories and poems in magazines including St. Nicholas, Ladies' Home Journal, and Literary Digest. McNeely died in Dubuque in December 1930 after being struck by a car, but her work continued to reach readers through posthumous books such as Winning Out and The Way to Glory and Other Stories.