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On May 25, 1886, Leta A. Stetter was born in Dawes County, Nebraska near the town of Chadron. She was the first of three children born to Margaret Elinor Danley and John G. Stetter. Her childhood consisted of multiple hardships beginning at the age of three when her mother died after giving birth to her third child, and her father deserted the family and left Leta and her sisters to be raised by their maternal grandparents on their farm. After ten years of absense, Leta’s father remarried and forced the children to leave their loving grandparents and move to Valentine, Nebraska to live with him and their stepmother. Leta described the experience of living there as a "fiery furnace" due, in part, to the alcoholism that plagued the household and the verbal and emotional abuse inflicted upon the children by their stepmother School was her only refuge from this abusive home life. Leta attended Valentine High School where she excelled in the classroom and discovered her talent and passion for writing. Her overall intelligence, wit, and humor were made evident when she was hired at age fifteen to write weekly columns in the town newspaper, The Valentine Democrat. She was able to make her final escape from home in 1902 when she graduated from Valentine High School.[1]

When she was just 16 years old, she enrolled at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln[2] where she blossomed academically. She was the literary editor of The Daily Nebraskan, associate editor of The Sombrero, and assistant editor of The Senior Book. During her time at the University of Nebraska, she met and became engaged to Harry Hollingworth. He moved to New York to do graduate work at Columbia University. Stetter stayed behind in Nebraska to finish her undergraduate studies. She graduated with Phi Bea Kappa honors in 1906 and received her Bachelor of Arts degree, along with a State Teacher's Certificate. This qualified her to teach English Language and Literature in any Nebraska public high school.[3]