Lost House

by Frances Shelley Wees

Genres: Harlequin

First published January 1, 1949

About the author

Born in Gresham, Oregon, Frances Shelley Johnson (1902-1982) never gave up her American citizenship although she spent the majority of her life in Canada. After the end of her parents' brief marriage, Frances and at least one of her two brothers seem to have not lived with either their father and his new family in Idaho or their mother and her new family in Oregon. During adolescence, Frances moved to Saskatoon where she became a teacher at the age of seventeen. While an undergraduate at the University of Alberta, where she received her BA, she wrote her first novel, which was never published. Her first book, THE MAESTRO MURDERS (1931), led to more than two dozen mystery and romance novels. Her marriage in 1924 to Wilfred Rusk Wees (1899-1981), who taught psychology at the Camrose Normal School and served as executive vice-president of Gage Publishing Ltd., resulted in two children. In addition to her more than a dozen books, Frances published primary readers, serial fiction, articles, and poems in various periodicals, worked as a Chautauqua director during the 1920s, did public relations work in Toronto during the 1930s and 1940s, and directed the national clothing drive for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration during World War II. She traveled to China in 1959. After spending some 30 years in Stouffville, Ontario, she moved to Denman Island in 1981, where Wilfred soon passed away from a heart attack. Frances died only six months later.