Kansas-born Grace Stone Coates was a young teacher in Butte, Montana when she married Henderson Coates in 1910. They moved to the fledgling town of Martinsdale, where Henderson and his brother opened a general store. Coates found another life in her writing. Coates immersed herself in poetry, short stories, and letters. She published two books of poetry and an acclaimed novel, Black Cherries. She corresponded with many celebrated authors, such as William Saroyan, Native American writer, Frank Bird Linderman, and Charles Russell art historian James Rankin, and many others. In a small town, a woman of quiet passion and keen intellect lived two lives, the ordinary and the brilliant.