Katherine Mary Flannigan (born Katherine Mary O'Fallon, c. 1890, Ireland, died 1954) was an Irish-born literary figure and author. She immigrated with her family to Boston, Massachusetts, as a small child. At age 16, she travelled to Calgary

Calgary

Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

, Alberta, to visit family and recover from an illness. In 1907, she met and married Mike Flannigan, a sergeant with the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, and moved with him to isolated posts in the mountain and lake regions of British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

 and northern Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

 (Lesser Slave Lake

Lesser Slave Lake

Lesser Slave Lake is a lake located in central Alberta, Canada, northwest of Edmonton. It is the second largest lake entirely within Alberta boundaries , covering and measuring over long and at its widest point. Lesser Slave Lake averages in depth and is at its deepest...

). Her true story was the basis for the novel Mrs. Mike and the 1949 film of the same title.

After Sgt. Flannigan's death in 1933, Mrs. Flannigan left the North for a time and eventually related her story to Benedict and Nancy Freedman. Their novel drawn from her experiences, Mrs. Mike

Mrs. Mike

Mrs. Mike, the Story of Katherine Mary Flannigan is a novel by Benedict and Nancy Mars Freedman set in the Canadian wilderness in the early 1900s. Considered by some a young adult classic, Mrs. Mike has been published in several editions and is read worldwide...

, was published in 1947 and became a critical and popular success.

Mrs. Flannigan then wrote The Faith of Mrs. Kelleen, which was set in 1880s Ireland and based on the story of her great-aunt. The January 1951 New York Times review by Orville Prescott stated, "Having lived a life of dramatic adventure (her honeymoon was a 700-mile jaunt by dog team in the Canadian north) and having seen others write a popular novel about it, Mrs. Flannigan has evidently decided that any other books about her relations might as well be written by herself."

Press sources report that in her later years, Mrs. Flannigan remarried, wedding John P. Knox, and lived in Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

. She died August 8, 1954, while visiting family and friends in Calgary.

Sources

• Freedman, Benedict, and Nancy Mars Freedman. Mrs. Mike, the Story of Katherine Mary Flannigan. Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1947.
• New York Times, Aug. 10, 1954 (obituary
  Obituary
  An obituary is a news article that reports the recent death of a person, typically along with an account of the person's life and information about the upcoming funeral. In large cities and larger newspapers, obituaries are written only for people considered significant...
  
  ) "Katherine Mary Flannigan Was Inspiration For Bestseller"
• New York Times, Jan. 2, 1951, "Books of the Times."
• New York Times film review of "Mrs. Mike" at http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/103117/Mrs-Mike/overview