In 1875 she married John Courtland Waite with whom she had two children: Myraetta & Bessie After the death of their son Sylvester in 1880, she left her husband and began to work, getting her first job with the Santa Rosa Republican newspaper and learning the writing and publishing trade.
In 1887 she went to work for the San Francisco Examiner as one of the two female staff journalists. She soon rose to associate editor for the Overland Monthly. (Before editing for the Overland Monthly, she wrote articles for it.)
Although most of her books fall firmly into non-fiction areas like wine tasting and history, Eunice wrote one book that is often sold as an early work of science fiction. "Yermah the Dorado" is an adventure story about a lost race, in a place that will become San Francisco 11,000 years later. She published the book originally in 1897. After seeing the effects of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake she made changes to the book. In her reprint of the book, the author called her book "Yermah the Dorado - pre-vision of what is to be".Though sold as science fiction, there has been an argument about whether many Victorian era books meet its definition. Darko Suvin argues that the book is not science fiction because it lacks a distinct science-fiction narrative throughout the book.
