Patricia St. John

St. John lived her later years in Canley, Coventry, where she worshipped at Canley Evangelical Church and ran children's Bible classes from home. She died in Canley on 16 August 1993 as a result of heart problems. She was pre-deceased by her brother, Farnham, who became medical director of Tulloch Memorial Hospital, Tangiers and died in Cambridge on 10 February 1980.

St. John was known as one of the most prolific British Protestant evangelical writers of fiction in the latter part of the 20th century. Some of her fiction books for children, Treasures of the Snow (1980-3), The Tanglewood's Secret (1980) and Star of Light, have been produced as movies.

After completing her school education, Patricia trained to become a nurse during World War II. After the war ended she became a house mother at her aunt's boarding school, Clarendon School for Girls, until joining her older brother, Farnham, in Tangiers, Morocco, where he was a missionary doctor after qualifying at the University of Cambridge in 1944. A newspaper interview published in the Coventry Evening Telegraph on 24 October 1978, recalls that her writings - poetry and children's stories - had already earned her some money, so she financed herself while helping her brother. Although initially working with Farnham in the main foreign hospital in Tangier, she later spent five years manning a village clinic in Xauen, or Chaouen, in a more remote area on the coast of Morocco. Eventually, she returned to Tangiers, spending 27 years working as a missionary nurse overseas. jwlkeiouhw

Patricia Mary St. John (5 April 1919 – 15 August 1993) was an English writer who was known as one of the most prolific British Protestant evangelical writers of fiction in the latter part of the 20th century. She worked for much of her life as a Protestant missionary nurse in Morocco. During her time as a house mother at Clarendon School for Girls which was run by her aunt, she wrote Treasures of the Snow and The Tanglewoods' Secret. Her later novels Star of Light and Secret of the Fourth Candle were based on her experiences in Tangiers. She lived for some years until her death in Canley, Coventry in 1993.

The third of five children (the others being Farnham, John, Oliver and Hazel), Patricia was born on 5 April 1919 in Hastings, Sussex to Harold (Harry) and Ella St. John nee Swain, shortly after her parents' return from South America (Carangola, Brazil) where they had worked as missionaries for some years. Her older brother, Farnham Allen Rees St. John, was born on 2 June 1918: he also used the name Farnham Allen Rees.