Susan Van Kirk

History and mystery are part of my DNA. My mother grew up in downstate Illinois in Spoon River country, an early influence on Edgar Lee Masters and Abraham Lincoln. Her life was surrounded by fields and woods strewn with arrowheads casually overturned by bare feet walking through the August haze to a farm pond for a swim.

Born at the end of World War II, I was always surrounded by markers of earlier centuries. I grew up in Galesburg, Illinois, and I spent hours in the Carnegie-built library a stone’s throw from Beecher Chapel, named for the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Still another block away was Knox College, “born of the prairie” in 1837, whose steely-eyed Presbyterian founders were noted national advocates of abolition. Abraham Lincoln debated the Little Giant, Stephen A. Douglas, at Old Main, a building still standing on the Knox campus.

When I began writing, is it any wonder I combined history with my favorite genre, mystery?

Mysteries became my favorites early in life beginning in kindergarten when I envisioned Jane considering ways to do away with bossy Dick in my first reading book. My writing career followed forty-four years of teaching in high school and college classrooms in Monmouth, Illinois. This new direction into writing began as my three children were leaving home for college and their futures. Now, they have eleven children of their own, including two sets of twins. Ah, a new generation to whom I could read lovely children’s books.

Those children grew into teenagers, becoming old enough to read my books, and now they’ve discovered their grandma has murder and larceny on her mind. This is a wicked, cool grandma!

Love a good mystery? Come along with me through three small towns in the Midwest where long-buried secrets and twists and turns will have you guessing everyone’s the killer.

The Endurance Mysteries and the Art Center Books…Keeping you up at night…with the light on.