Virginia Sorenson

Virginia Sorensen, née Eggertsen, also credited as Virginia Sorenson (February 17, 1912, in Provo, Utah – December 24, 1991), was the author of the 1957 John Newbery Medal winning Miracles on Maple Hill, based in the Erie area where she lived at the time. She grew up in Manti and American Fork, Utah. Her first novel, A Little Lower Than the Angels, was written and published in 1942 while she resided in Terre Haute, Indiana, with her first husband Frederick C. Sorensen, a professor at Indiana State Teachers College, now Indiana State University. With its publication, Alfred Knopf declared, ""I have seldom introduced a new novelist with the confidence I feel in the author of this remarkable book. It marks the debut, I believe, of a major American writer." She is considered "one of Utah's premiere gifts to literary America." Her first book for children, Curious Missy, grew out of her efforts with a bookmobile in Alabama. She later divorced Sorensen and married Alec Waugh, son of Arthur Waugh and brother of Evelyn Waugh, in 1969. Her books are usually Mormon-themed. She received two Guggenheim fellowships, one in 1946 to study tribe of Mexican Indians, and one in 1954 to study in Denmark as regards the history of Sanpete Valley's settlers.