Thelma L. Strabel (19 December 1900 – 28 May 1959) was an American novelist who specialized in tales of the American South and sea adventures. She is best known for her novel Reap the Wild Wind, which was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and became a successful film.
Strabel was born in Crown Point, Indiana on December 19, 1900, the first child of grocer John George Strabel and his wife Nannsie. (For unknown reasons, Strabel later claimed Pennsylvania as her birthplace.) She was the great-granddaughter of Abraham Lincoln's private secretary, General John Hall. She grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, but spent much of her youth also in southwestern Pennsylvania, her mother's native district.
Strabel published her first short story in the children's section of a Pittsburgh newspaper. At 16, she worked as a census enumerator for the local census board. She graduated from the University of Illinois and later became a fashion reporter in ...
