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Martha Ostenso, a Norwegian-born American author, screenwriter, poet, and teacher, immigrated to the United States around 1902 with her parents, Sigurd and Olina (née Tungeland) Ostenso. She was raised in small towns across North Dakota, Minnesota, and Manitoba, Canada. As a teenager, she taught school in Manitoba before enrolling at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. Later, she took writing classes at Columbia University and worked as a social worker in Brooklyn before returning to Minnesota to teach and write.
Ostenso’s first published work was a poetry collection titled "A Far Land" (1924). However, her major breakthrough came the following year when she won the Dodd Mead First Novel Award and its $13,500 prize for her novel "Wild Geese" (originally titled "The Passionate Flight"). The book brought her significant income through serial and film rights, secured by the contest’s co-sponsors, Pictorial Review Magazine and the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. Additionally, the media coverage of her success led to numerous marriage proposals arriving by mail.
In 1944, Ostenso married her longtime companion, Canadian writer Douglas Durkin. They first met when she was a high school student in Brandon, Manitoba, and he was an English professor at Brandon College. Durkin recognized her writing talent early on and became her mentor, later managing her career and co-authoring nearly all her books, including "Wild Geese". They married after the passing of his first wife, from whom he had long been separated.
Together, Ostenso and Durkin collaborated on numerous short stories and more than a dozen novels over the years. One of their notable works, "O River, Remember," a novel depicting the lives of two immigrant families across generations in Minnesota's Red River Valley, received the Literary Guild choice award in 1943. Their stories often reflected the regions where Ostenso grew up and incorporated Norwegian cultural values. Their joint works include "The Passionate Flight" (1925), "The Dark Dawn" (1926), "The Mad Carews" (1927), "The Young May Moon" (1929), "The Water's Under the Earth" (1930), "Prologue to Love" (1932), "There's Always Another Year" (1933), "The White Reef" (1934), "The Stone Field" (1937), "The Mandrake Root" (1938), "Love Passed This Way" (1942), "The Sunset Tree" (1943), and "Milk Route" (1948).
Ostenso, who became a U.S. citizen in 1931, lived and worked mainly near Gull Lake, close to Brainerd, Minnesota, and in Hollywood, California. There, she and Durkin befriended stars such as Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Mary Pickford, and Henry Fonda. While some writers have associated Fonda with a 1940 remake of "Wild Geese," he actually starred in "Wild Geese Calling" (1941), a film based on Stewart Edward White’s novel of the same name.
In 1963, Ostenso and Durkin retired to Seattle to be near his two sons. She passed away there on November 23, 1963, following a sudden illness.
