People like Marjorie Holmes

Marjorie Holmes (1910—2002) was an American columnist and best-selling Christian author of 134 books, 32 of which were best sellers. Holmes is known best for her biblical trilogy which began with the novel Two From Galilee, a love story about Mary and Joseph, published by Fleming H. Revell.

Born in 1910 in Storm Lake, Iowa, to tractor salesman Sam Holmes and his wife, Marjorie Holmes began writing as a teenager, selling her first story during the Great Depression before graduating from Cornell College in 1931. She met engineering student Lynn Mighell (pronounced mile), a native of Holstein, at a writers' workshop at the University of Iowa. They married in 1932, living first in McLean then Manassas, Virginia, and had four children, including a daughter named Melanie. In her spare time, Holmes wrote a twice-weekly syndicated family-life column, "Love and Laughter," for the Washington Evening Star newspaper from 1959 to 1973 and a monthly column, "A Woman's Conversations With God," from 1970 to 1975. She wrote articles in magazines such as Woman's Day, McCall's, Ladies Home Journal, Reader's Digest, Better Homes & Gardens, Today's Health and Daily Guidepost. She also taught university level writing courses. Her first novel, World By the Tail, was published in 1943. She attracted a loyal audience with her commonsense parables and pick-me-ups published in such volumes as "Hold Me up a Little Longer, Lord" and "Secrets of Health, Energy, and Staying Young," an ode to the miraculous properties of nutritional supplements.