Virginia Rath

Virginia Rath was born Virginia McVay in California. She taught high school in Beckwourth, California, a mountain railroad town, and she married a railroad telegrapher. In the 1930s she published short stories in mystery magazines, and her first book, Death at Dayton's Folly, was published in 1935. During World War II, she herself worked in a railroad telegraph office. Later she moved to San Francisco and became was active in San Francisco literary circles. Although A Shroud for Rowena the last book published under her name, she was also one of the authors behind the “Theo Durrant” group pseudonym, and she collaborated on The Marble Forest (1951), although she did not live to see it published.