Photo: Boston Public Library, Norman B. Leventhal Map Center / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
Faith McNulty spent much of her life on a farm in Wakefield, where stray and injured animals were always welcome. From there she wrote for The New Yorker for four decades and produced a shelf of books for adults and children, most of them about animals and the people who try to protect them. She died at her farm in April 2005, at 86.
From newsroom to The New Yorker
Born Faith Trumbull Corrigan in New York City in 1918, the daughter of a judge, she studied briefly at Barnard College and at Rhode Island State College in Kingston before leaving to work as a copy girl at the New York Daily News. She later worked for Life magazine and, during World War II, for the U.S. Office of War Information in London.
She joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 1953 and stayed until 1994. Her first husband, John McNulty, was also a writer for the magazine; after his death she married Richard Martin, a designer. For years she edited the magazine’s annual roundup of the best children’s books.
The Burning Bed
Her best-known book for adults, The Burning Bed (1980), told the true story of Francine Hughes, a Michigan woman who set fire to the bedroom where her abusive husband was sleeping and was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. The book became a 1984 television film starring Farrah Fawcett and helped bring national attention to domestic violence.
Writing for children
McNulty’s children’s books include How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World (1979), Woodchuck, A Snake in the House, Dancing with Manatees and When I Lived with Bats. Her last book, If You Decide to Go to the Moon, illustrated by Steven Kellogg and published in 2005, won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for nonfiction the following year. For adults she wrote about endangered species, including the whooping crane and the black-footed ferret.
A local cause
Her mother had founded the Animal Welfare League in southern Rhode Island, and late in life McNulty wrote a weekly newspaper column about the league’s shelter and the animals waiting for homes. She was well known around Wakefield for taking in animals that needed care.
Finding her books
Many of McNulty’s books are available through the South Kingstown Public Library and the Ocean State Libraries network, and her children’s titles remain popular with teachers.
