Harriet Huntington Doerr (1910–2002) was an American author known for her evocative storytelling and late literary début. Her novels explore memory, identity, and cultural contrasts, particularly between the U.S. and Mexico.
Born in Pasadena, California, Doerr was the granddaughter of railroad magnate Henry Edwards Huntington. She attended Smith College, later transferring to Stanford University but left before graduating to marry Albert Doerr (1930.) After decades in Mexico due to her husband’s mining business, she returned to California following his death (1972.) At 67, she completed her degree in European history at Stanford and began writing.
Her début novel, Stones for Ibarra (1984,) won the National Book Award for Fiction, depicting an American couple’s life in a Mexican village. She followed with Consider This, Señora (1993,) another Mexico-set novel, and Tiger in the Grass: Stories and Other Inventions (1995,) a collection of short stories and essays.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Harriet Doerr
During your life, everything you do and everyone you meet rubs off in some way. Some bit of everything you experience stays with everyone you’ve ever known, and nothing is lost. That’s what’s eternal, these little specks of experience in a great, enormous river that has no end.
—Harriet Doerr
Leave a Reply