Rose Wilder Lane was born in De Smet, Dakota Territory, the first (and only surviving) child of Laura and Almanzo Wilder. She became a well-known reporter, columnist, and novelist, and her active career as a writer began around 1910 and extended until the Vietnam War, for which she was a war correspondent. She married Claire Gillette Lane in 1909, and they had one child, a boy, who died shortly after birth in 1910. She and her husband divorced in 1918.