Peattie and her husband were both journalists and wrote articles for the Chicago Tribune. They later moved to Omaha and Peattie became the chief editorial writer for the Omaha World-Herald. She was commissioned by Chicago publishers to write a young people’s history of the United States, and wrote the seven-hundred page “The Story of America” in four months. Peattie subsequently returned to Chicago and became literary editor of the Chicago Tribune. Oh, and her son was the famed botanist, naturalist and author Donald Culross Peattie.