Biography
Thelma L. Strabel (December 19, 1900 – May 28, 1959) was an American novelist known for her stories about the American South and maritime adventures. Her most famous work, Reap the Wild Wind, was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and adapted into a successful film.
Born in Crown Point, Indiana, Strabel was the eldest child of grocer John George Strabel and his wife Nannsie. Although she later claimed Pennsylvania as her birthplace for unknown reasons, she was the great-granddaughter of General John Hall, Abraham Lincoln's private secretary. She was raised in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and spent much of her youth in southwestern Pennsylvania, her mother's home region.
Strabel's first short story appeared in the children's section of a Pittsburgh newspaper. At 16, she worked as a census enumerator. She graduated from the University of Illinois and later worked as a fashion reporter in Paris and an advertising copywriter for Abraham & Straus. While recovering from an illness in Switzerland, she began writing fiction professionally. Her early works include Smart Woman (1933), Streamline Marriage (1937), For Richer — Or For Poorer? (1938), and You Can't Escape Forever (1938). She wrote novels set in diverse locations, from Caribbean islands to the jungles of Peru.
Her most renowned novel, Reap the Wild Wind (1940), is a romantic tale about wreckers near Key West, Florida. Cecil B. DeMille purchased the rights and, with many modifications, produced a popular 1942 film starring Paulette Goddard and John Wayne. Strabel, captivated by Key West and its history, built a house there after selling the story to The Saturday Evening Post. Located at 400 South Street, the house was controversially described by Strabel as the southernmost residence in the United States and remained a favored tourist spot until it was demolished and replaced by a larger building.
Strabel married David P. Godwin, chief of fire control for the U.S. Forest Service, which was the basis for her short story The Forest Ranger—also filmed in 1942 as The Forest Rangers. Godwin died in a plane crash on June 13, 1947, and Strabel did not remarry.
Her later works include Storm to the South (1944), a romance set in Bolivarian Peru; You Were There, serialized in Woman's Home Companion and adapted into the 1946 film Undercurrent; and Caribee (1957), a romantic novel centered on the 1902 Mount Pelée volcanic eruption.
Strabel passed away from cancer on May 28, 1959, in Washington, D.C., and was buried in Charleston, South Carolina.
