Stewart was born in San Francisco in 1922. She grew up in Los Angeles with her father, a promoter of silver mines. Her first published works were serialized stories for Collier's magazine. The first of them, first published as "Bitter Harvest" from November 24 to December 8, 1945, was quickly optioned by Hollywood producer Hal B. Wallis and became the basis of Desert Fury, a film noir by Lewis Allen starring Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak, and Burt Lancaster. Stewart later developed the story into her first full-length novel with the titleDesert Town. After this early success, Stewart continued to submit material to Collier's, often coming-of-age stories that were popular in the slicks. She wouldn't publish another novel until 1962, The Stars Abide. This was followed by several other books sharing the themes she had established in her debut: odd love triangles, dysfunctional families, and more or less explicit homosexual relationships. At least one of those books, The Surprise Party Complex, dealing with disenchanted teenagers living in Hollywood, seems to have been turned into a spec script, but no film was produced. After a detour toward the historical novel with Casey in 1968, Stewart finally settled as an author of thrillers with supernaturalelements in the 1970s, starting with The Possession of Joel Delaney, which became her second title to be adapted into a film, directed by Waris Hussein and starring Shirley MacLaine and Perry King. Stewart's final novel, The Nightmare Candidate, was published in 1980. For much of her adult age she lived with her husband in Key West, Florida, where she died in 2006.
Reception and impact
While Desert Town has been marketed as an early example of pulp fiction, Stewart's early novels in particular have been praised for the depth hidden beneath the raunchy dialogue and the relationships between innocent females and almost clichéd males. Author and poet Sarah Key wrote that Stewart's female characters were "ahead of their time, often outcasts from conventional society, sometimes aided by supernatural forces". Stewart's work is also noted for its early depictions of homosexual relationships. Noir expert Eddie Muller called the film adaptation of Desert Town "the gayest movie ever produced in Hollywood's golden era".
