Biography

She was born on December 25, 1918 in born in Grass Lake

Grass Lake, Michigan

Grass Lake is a village in Jackson County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 1,082 at the 2000 census.In 1842 the Michigan Central Railroad bypassed the original village and built a depot to the west...

, Jackson County, Michigan

Jackson County, Michigan

As of the census of 2000, there were 158,422 people, 58,168 households, and 40,833 families residing in the county. The population density was 224 people per square mile . There were 62,906 housing units at an average density of 89/sq mi...

. She grew up on her grandparents' farm and attended a one-room country school. Wolff was a senior at the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 when she wrote a novel-length story for an English composition class that won the 1940 Avery Hopwood Award

Hopwood Award

The Hopwood Awards are a major scholarship program at the University of Michigan, founded by Avery Hopwood.Under the terms of the will of Avery Hopwood, a prominent American dramatist and member of the Class of 1905 of The University of Michigan, one-fifth of Mr. Hopwood's estate was given to the...

, a university prize for excellent writing, worth $1,000. Whistle Stop is a seamy tale of the Veeches, a shiftless family living in a whistle-stop town

Whistle Stop

Whistle Stop is a 1946 movie starring George Raft and Ava Gardner. The film was shot in black and white and in the film noir style. The picture was directed by Léonide Moguy and based on a novel by Maritta M. Wolff...

 near Detroit. The novel, depicting incest, violence, and containing much more vulgar language than was usual at the time, was published the next year by Random House

Random House

Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

. That Wolff, a mere 22-year-old, was the author of so hard-boiled a novel gave her an instant notoriety, and Whistle Stop became an immediate best-seller, going into five editions and a special armed forces edition. Yet the book was not without literary merit, Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis

Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...

 calling it "the most important novel of the year."

Wolff's second novel, Night Shift, attracted more critical praise, especially for its dialog. Over the next 20 years she wrote four more best-selling novels. Always a private person who shunned publicity, Wolff, in 1972, refused her publisher's request to go on a promotional tour for a recently finished novel, Sudden Rain, and as a result the novel was never published during her lifetime. At that point she evidently ceased writing fiction.

While at the University of Michigan she had met and married a prolific young writer, Hubert Skidmore

Hubert Skidmore

Hubert Skidmore was an American author. His twin brother was novelist Hobert Skidmore, and he was married to the novelist Maritta Wolff, author of Whistle Stop and a fellow student at the University of Michigan, in 1942. He died in a house fire in 1946...

, who published six novels before he was 30. Skidmore died in a house fire in 1946. In 1947 Wolff married a costume jeweller

Costume jewelry

Costume jewelry is jewelry manufactured as ornamentation to complement a particular fashionable costume or garment. Costume jewelry came into being in the 1930s as a cheap, disposable accessory meant to be worn with a specific outfit...

, Leonard Stegman, by whom she had a son, Hugh Stegman.

After Wolff's death, the manuscript for Sudden Rain, which had been kept safely in her refrigerator for the last thirty years of her life, was published (along with re-issues of Whistle Stop and Night Shift) to much acclaim.

Publications

• Whistle Stop (Random House, N.Y.C., 1941). Made into a film in 1946 starring George Raft
  George Raft
  George Raft was an American film actor and dancer identified with portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s...
  
   and Ava Gardner
  Ava Gardner
  Ava Lavinia Gardner was an American actress.She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers . She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses, considered one of the most beautiful women of her day...
  
  .
• Night Shift (Random House, N.Y.C., 1942). Made into the 1946 film The Man I Love
  The Man I Love (film)
  The Man I Love is a noir film made in 1947, based on the novel Night Shift by Maritta M. Wolff.-Plot:Visiting her two sisters and brother, singer Petey Brown lands a job at small-time-hood Nicky Toresca's nightclub...
  
  starring Ida Lupino
  Ida Lupino
  Ida Lupino was an English-born film actress and director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers. In her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed seven others, mostly in the United States. She appeared in serial television programmes 58 times and directed 50 other episodes...
  
  .
• About Lyddy Thomas (Random House, N.Y.C., 1943)
• Back of Town (Random House, N.Y.C., 1952)
• The Big Nickelodeon (Random House, N.Y.C., 1956)
• Buttonwood (Random House, N.Y.C., 1962)
• Sudden Rain (Scribners, N.Y.C., 2005)

Further reading

• "Maritta Wolff Stegman, 83" (obituary) in Chicago Tribune
  Chicago Tribune
  The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
  
  , 17 July 2002
• Introduction to Sudden Rain by Margot Livesey
  Margot Livesey
  Margot Livesey is a Scottish born writer. She is the author of six novels, numerous short stories, and essays on the craft of writing fiction....
  
  , Scribners, N.Y.C., 2005, pp. vii-viii