Born in 1909, Lael Tucker Wertenbaker was a foreign war correspondent for TIME magazine in the 1930s through to the 1950s, prior to becoming a novelist. Through her work overseas, she and her husband met and befriended author Ernest Hemingway. She also wrote articles for magazines Fortune, Life, and US News & World Report as well as a few program scripts for CBS.

Wertenbaker went on to write a memoir, Death of a Man, in which she talks about helping her husband with his assisted suicide in 1955 after his terminal colon cancer diagnosis. A stage play was later made of this memoir, starring Henry Fonda and Olivia DeHavilland. Wertenbaker herself died of lung cancer in 1997 at the age of 87.