Lydia Davis was born Myra Lydia Henderson in 1919 in
New Zealand, where she grew up in
Dunedin. She studied law at the
University of Otago for a period, then trained as a nurse at
Dunedin Hospital. In 1940, she married
Thomas Davis, a medical student at the time, in a secret ceremony due to her wealthy parents' disapproval. The couple had three sons: John, Timothy, and Bobby. She moved with Thomas to his native
Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands, where she wrote for various newspapers and magazines in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. In 1952, she drew attention for sailing from New Zealand to the United States in a yacht alongside her husband and two children—while pregnant with their third—a journey she catalogued in dispatches to New Zealand newspapers as well as the
Saturday Evening Post. Davis co-wrote with her husband the autobiographical
Doctor to the Islands, documenting their experiences during Thomas's career as a medical officer, which was published in 1955 and later adapted into a program for the
BBC. Lydia and Thomas divorced in 1978, the year he became prime minister of the Cook Islands. == References ==