Elizabeth Seifert

Bess Gasparotti She was reported by the St. Louis Globe-Democrat to be one of the two of "Moberly's Most Famous Women".

Biography Seifert was born in Washington, Missouri, the daughter of Richard Chester Seifert, a railroad engineer, and Anna Sanford. She had two sisters, Shirley and Adele Seifert, who were authors based in St. Louis. In 1918, she received an A.B. degree from Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in English. Seifert had initially enrolled in the university's medical school, where she was the only female student, intending to become a doctor, but dropped out after a year and a half when her family did not encourage her ambition and university officials told her that as a woman, she could complete her medical training but would not be awarded a degree. She continued taking some medical courses, including anatomy, physiology, and medical dietetics, and also audited a creative writing class.

After leaving medical school, Seifert worked in various capacities in hospitals and in the Social Hygiene Bureau during World War I. In 1920, she married John J. Gasparotti, a World War I veteran, and the couple moved to Moberly, Missouri, where Gasparotti operated an ice plant. They had four children together.

In 1937, Seifert's husband was declared totally disabled due to war injuries, and with four teenage children to support, Seifert began writing more seriously in her spare time to supplement the family's income. That year, she completed her first manuscript, Young Doctor Galahad. Seifert sent the manuscript to her sister, Shirley Seifert, a writer of historical fiction, who forwarded it to her publisher, who recognized it as an exceptional first novel and helped Seifert enter it in a contest held by Dodd, Mead & Co., and sponsored by Redbook, where it won a $10,000 (roughly US$ today) award. Surgeon In Charge (1942) A Certain Doctor (1943) Dusty Spring (1947) Take Three Doctors (1947) Hospital Zone (1948) Miss Doctor (1951) Hometown Doctor (1959) Rival Doctors (1967)