An American fiction author, she published her National Book Award-winning debut novel, Stones for Ibarra, when she was seventy-four years old. The popular work was subsequently made into a 1988 television movie.
She studied at Smith College and Stanford University.
She published her second novel, Consider This, Senora, in 1993.
She married Albert Doerr in 1930. After living in Mexico for a time, she and Doerr raised their son, Michael, and daughter, Martha, in Pasadena, California.
She and Joyce Carol Oates both won the National Book Award.
