Zelda Popkin
Zelda Popkin (1898–1983, née Feinberg) was an American author of novels and mystery stories. She created Mary Carner, one of the first professional female private detectives in fiction. Carner was a store detective who appeared in five novels. Connections have been made with Angela Lansbury’s character in the television series Murder, She Wrote — Jessica Fletcher.
Popkin's most successful book was The Journey Home, published in 1945, which sold nearly a million copies. Small Victory, published in 1947, was one of the first American novels with a Holocaust theme, and Quiet Street (1951) was the first American novel about the creation of the state of Israel. She also wrote an autobiography, Open Every Door (1956), chronicling her childhood, life with Louis, and life after his death. Herman Had Two Daughters (1968), a novel about two young Jewish women growing up in a small Pennsylvania town, is also largely autobiographical.
Zelda Popkin was married to Louis Popkin, and together they ran a small public relations firm until his death. They had two children, Roy and Richard.
“What he found impossible was to shut off his brain, to detach himself from the intriguing problems with which (he) was involved, or to leave alone the major problems of war and peace, race and poverty, man's inhumanity to man and the persistence of stupidity.”
“You do not conceive a novel as easily as you conceive a child, nor even half as easily as you create nonfiction work. A journalist amasses facts, anecdotes and interviews with top brass. Enough of these add up to a book. A novelist demands quite different things. He has to find himself in his materials, to know for sure how he would feel and act and the events he writes about. In addition, he requires a catalyst — a person, idea, or emotion which coalesces his ingredients and makes them jell into a solid purpose.”