author
Means Davis
1904–1999
Best known for the warmly observed novel Miss Susie Slagle's, this American writer drew on Baltimore medical-school life and turned it into a beloved story that reached readers far beyond the city. Writing as Means Davis as well as Augusta Tucker, she also published mystery fiction with a sharp sense of setting and character.
1 Audiobook
The Hospital Murders
by Means Davis
About the author
Born in 1904 and later known as Augusta Tucker Townsend, she wrote under both her own name and the pen name Means Davis. She is most closely associated with Miss Susie Slagle's (1939), a novel set around Johns Hopkins medical students in Baltimore that helped bring wide attention to that world and was later adapted into a 1946 film.
Sources available during this search describe her as a Southern-born writer who moved to Baltimore during the Depression and became part of a lively literary circle there. Under the name Means Davis, she also wrote mystery novels including The Hospital Murders.
She died in 1999. While the surviving online references found here confirm her basic career and pen name, they offer only limited biographical detail, so this overview stays close to the facts that could be verified.