The daughter of James Abbe, a photographer, and Polly Shorrick, a Ziegfeld girl, Patience Abbe was born in Paris to her globetrotting parents. Instigated by her mother, she and her two younger brothers, Richard and John, wrote a best-selling book, "Around the World in Eleven Years" (1936) when Patience was 12.
lieutenant was followed by "Of All Places!" (1937) and "Number Place Like Home" (1940). In later years, the family and Herschel Brickell, literary editor of The New York Post, said that Patience had authored the books The fame of the books led the family to Hollywood, where the Abbes became part of Hollywood society.
Patience gave up writing books in her teens and the family"s fame declined.
A family anecdote, which Patience liked to recount, describes her 21st birthday party, where she met by chance a neighbor, Bette Davis. "Patience Abbe!" Davis exclaimed.
"I always wondered what happened to you!"
Foreign the last half century of her life, she lived in Marin and Shasta Counties, California, where she worked as a church secretary and as an assistant to authors. She was a sculptor and an active conservationist.
Her brother Richard West. Abbe, a California appellate court judge, died in 2000.
Her brother John lives in Sacramento.
