Marjorie Holmes loved the Lord.

Her faith was strong and inspiring. Because of it, she knew how to use her talent at storytelling to make God relatable to ordinary people. She wrote about her faith making it relevant to the challenges women found themselves facing throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Her work earned her the moniker “the patron saint of housewives.”

Marjorie, who began writing when she was just a child, enjoyed sharing her fairy tales and poems with her family and teachers. She was the daughter of a tractor salesman and his wife from Storm Lake, Iowa. After graduating from Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, Marjorie attended Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. earning a bachelor of arts degree in English and Art.  After graduating she moved to Iowa City, where she worked as a secretary. In 1932, Marjorie met and married University of Iowa engineering student Lynn Mighell.  With the country in the grip of the Great Depression and no job opportunities in her husband’s field, the young couple had decided to spend $35 for an old jalopy and set off to raise cabbages in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Years later, in an interview with the National Federation of Press Women (NFPW), Marjorie explained, “The car would go up the hill only in reverse, so we backed over the Ozark Mountains.” But the cabbages and picket fence she had wished for along with them were fantasies that never materialized.

Marjorie was patient, persistent and self-disciplined. She wrote for “love story magazines and Sunday school magazines, but before long I sold to better magazines. Woman’s Day,”  Marjorie shared with a reporter back in 1971, “was my first big magazine sale.”  She sold her first story while living in San Juan, Texas, a week before the birth of her first of four children.

As she began selling short stories and poems to magazines, her work appeared in the top women’s magazines of her era: Woman’s Day (for which she would become a columnist); Ladies Home Journal, McCall’s, Redbook, Reader’s Digest, Better Homes and Gardens, Writer’s Digest and Family Circle.

“World by the Tail,” an adult romance set in the Depression, was Marjorie’s first of 32 novels. Published in 1943, critics panned her work. It would be her loyal readers who embraced her stories making her a best-selling author.

For the next few years, she focused on writing books for teenaged girls.

Marjorie knew how to express her faith as “down-to-earth religion,” she said, “it’s simple, and direct and dealing with human problems.”   A fundamentalist Christian turned Episcopalian; religion was an intimate thing with her. She had a knack for making the cast in the Bible accessible to ordinary people. She wrote a twice-weekly syndicated column, “Love and Laughter” from 1959 to 1973 and a monthly column, “A Woman’s Conversations With God,” from 1970 to 1975 for the former Washington, D.C. Star newspaper.

While attending Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve 1963, Marjorie found herself inspired by the manger scene in front of her. “I could smell the fresh hay,” she recalled, “and it struck me that this was the greatest love story of all time.” From this experience, she penned her novel, “Two From Galilee: the story of Mary and Joseph.”  The book went on to become one of the best-selling novels of 1972.  Marjorie told the Dallas News, (Two From Galilee) “means more to me than anything else I have ever written. If I had never written anything else besides this book, I would still feel like I had accomplished something.” 

The highly popular fictionalized book became the foundation for her trilogy of the birth and life of Jesus Christ. The other two were: Three From Galilee: The Young Man From Nazareth in 1985, and The Messiah in 1987. When asked about the incredible success of the trilogy, Marjorie stated, “I made the Holy Family as real as the folks next door.”

Marjorie explained the success of her novels, “The secret of my sales,” she suggested, “is that a woman will buy or be given one, then will think of 10 friends to whom she wants to give it.”  Four of her books on essays and conversational prayers, including “I’ve Got to Talk to Somebody God” and “Who Am I God?”  along with “Two From Galilee” sold more than five million copies.

“Talent,” Marjorie stated, “A goal. Belief in your own ability in striving for that goal.” was just part of her beliefs she shared in a 1972 interview with the National Federation of Press Women (NFPW) after being honored as the Federation’s “Woman of Achievement” during its national conference held that year in Seattle, Washington. Marjorie believed “Nothing is impossible. We can do in life whatever we want to do it depends on how badly we want to do it.”

Recalling that drive in her Ford over the mountains early in her married life, Marjorie pressed, “You simply cannot quit. If you are ever going to get there, you must keep driving faithfully toward your goal. If you have the life force in the first place and keep at anything long enough, you too will come through. The whole secret is to keep growing and keep going.”

“Have faith in yourself. Your faith is directly related to faith in God, from whom all of this comes. No day passes that I don’t thank my creator for the marvelous gift of life. It’s such a miracle just to be here in this incredible world, and able to do the work I love. And so I want my work to affirm life rather than debase it, to help and encourage people rather than ever to harm or corrupt.”

In 1979, after years of illness, Marjorie’s husband died of cancer. Sustained by her writing, she claimed she had imagined herself back in circulation. At the age of 70, she didn’t hesitate to ask for help. “Each day, I would stand on my terrace and say, ‘Please God, send me a wonderful man.'”

As the story goes, physician George Schmieler, then 71 and more than 300 miles away seemed to answer her prayer.

Distraught at the death of his wife in 1980, George had been sorting through his deceased wife’s knitting when he discovered the book she had been reading, “I’ve Got to Talk to Somebody, God” by Marjorie Holmes. The book’s message was a comfort for his broken heart.  So taken with it, he traced Marjorie through family members to reach out to her.

Marjorie often heard from her readers and was not surprised at his call. She agreed to meet with Schmieler not knowing what to expect.

Over dinner, he explained his life of 44 years with his wife and family. But by the time he had driven Marjorie home, he had proposed. She declined believing he was still traumatized by the loss of his wife.

But, he persevered.

And four weeks later, George armed roses and a surprise vacation swept Marjorie off her feet. Realizing she was in love with George, Marjorie finally agreed. The couple married that July. Their union led to another book, “Second Wife, Second Life.”

A member of the Virginia Press Women, throughout her career Marjorie made numerous appearances on nationally televised shows.  She also taught adult writing classes at Washington-area universities. She lectured widely and traveled promoting her work.

“I’m never closer to God than at sunrise,” she once said. “He is there. You don’t have to wait until Sunday.”

Marjorie died at the age of 91. Her novels have now become classics. Her words continue to bring hope and inspiration to millions.