Nancy Mars Freedman (born July 4, 1920, in

Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( ) is a city, suburb of Chicago. Located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, it is situated on the North Shore along Lake Michigan. Evanston is north of Downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, Wil ...

, died August 10, 2010, in

Greenbrae, California Greenbrae is a small unincorporated community in Marin County, California. It is located south-southeast of downtown San Rafael, at an elevation of 33 feet (10 m), located adjacent to U.S. Route 101 at the opening of the Ross Valley. Part of ...

) was an American

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...

, the co-author of '' Mrs. Mike''..

Life

Upbringing

Freedman (née Nancy Mars) was a professional child actress for touring stage plays, and she met her husband

Benedict Freedman Benedict Freedman (December 19, 1919 – February 24, 2012) was an American novelist and mathematician, the co-author of '' Mrs. Mike'' and a professor of mathematics at Occidental College in Los Angeles.. Life Upbringing Freedman was born to a ...

in 1940 in

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

, where he was working as a writer and she was trying to break into movies. They married in 1940 despite her poor health, which began with a bout of

rheumatic fever Rheumatic fever (RF) is an inflammatory disease that can involve the heart, joints, skin, and brain. The disease typically develops two to four weeks after a streptococcal throat infection. Signs and symptoms include fever, multiple painful jo ...

at age three and lasted her entire life.

Writing career

She began writing novels with her husband in 1947 with ''Mrs. Mike'', the fictionalized story of their friend Katherine Mary Flannigan who married a

Mountie The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal police, federal and national police service of ...

and moved from Boston to the Canadian wilderness. It became a bestseller and inspired a 1950 film adaptation. The two Freedmans wrote nine more novels together, and Freedman wrote several more by herself. Her later works, including ''Mary, Mary Quite Contrary'' (1968) and ''Sappho: The Tenth Muse'' (1998) have been called "ardently feminist." Sappho was later made into an opera composed by Daniel Steven Crafts, the libretto by Nancy and Benedict, with the premiere sung by their daughter Deborah in 1998. Her book '' Joshua Son of None'' (1973) was a political thriller about the clandestine cloning of a young assassinated President (strongly implied to be, although never actually named as,

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...

Family

Freedman's son,

Michael Freedman Michael Hartley Freedman (born April 21, 1951) is an American mathematician, at Microsoft Station Q, a research group at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1986, he was awarded a Fields Medal for his work on the 4-dimensional gene ...

, became a noted mathematician, and her two daughters also work in academia as a musician at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and as the director of the medical humanities program at the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...

References

1920 births 2010 deaths 20th-century American novelists American feminist writers American women novelists American stage actresses American child actresses Writers from Evanston, Illinois Actresses from Evanston, Illinois 20th-century American women writers Novelists from Illinois 21st-century American women {{US-novelist-1920s-stub