Background
Barker was born in Farmington, New Hampshire, a descendant of early settlers of Massachusetts.
Barker was born in Farmington, New Hampshire, a descendant of early settlers of Massachusetts.
She attended the University of New Hampshire, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1934 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
lieutenant was published with a foreword by Stephen Vincent Benet and was well reviewed. In what his biographer described as "a characteristic act of poetic retaliation", Frost penned the ribald poem "Pride of Ancestry" and the religious poem "Not All There". He did not tell Lewis of his objections to Barker"s work and there is no record that there was any correspondence between Frost and Barker.
Barker did not publish another book for sixteen years.
She graduated with an Master of Arts in English from Radcliffe College in 1938 and a degree in library science from the Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science in 1941. Beginning in 1940, she worked as a librarian at the New York Public Library, primarily in the American history section.
In 1949, she published her debut novel, Peace My Daughters, about the Salem witch trials, which she believed her ancestors had attended. She wrote a series of successful formula historical novels, most of them set in her native New England and some with supernatural elements.
Two of her novels, Rivers Parting (1952) and Swear by Apollo (1959), were Literary Guild selections.
The success of these novels enabled her to leave the New York Public Library in 1953 and she moved to Concord, New Hampshire. Barker was found inside a car in her garage in Penacook, New Hampshire, dead of carbon monoxide poisoning. The car windows were up and the gas tank was empty.
Her death was ruled a suicide.
When Frost biographer Lawrance Thompson attempted to access her papers, he was told by her executor that they all "had disappeared under mysterious circumstances". However, typescripts, galleys, and plate proofs of the novels Liza Bowe, Swear by Apollo, and The Last Gentleman are in the University of New Hampshire Library.