About

Me, wearing my spiffy cemetery-visiting hat while exploring Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Franklin County, Kansas.

After spending my entire childhood in the same house in Kansas City, Kansas, I headed west to Los Angeles, where I earned my bachelor’s degree at the University of Southern California. Eleven moves later, I found myself in the heart of Kansas. It wasn’t until I began to explore the prairies and little towns of Kansas that I really found home. I fell in love with the landscape, the history, and the people.

I have found my passion in collecting, interpreting, and writing down local history. I’m particularly intrigued by “microhistory”–the history of a single person, a single building, or a single object. I am fascinated by the stories cemeteries tell, and I have photographed headstones for Find-A-Grave. I have served on the Franklin County Historical Society Board of Trustees and am living in my own historic place, a modest 113-year-old folk Victorian house built by Ottawa Business College founders Grant and Ruby Crain.

My first book, Shadow on the Hill: The True Story of a 1925 Kansas Murder, about the murder of Coffey County woman Florence Knoblock, came out in 2013. I recently joined Sisters in Crime and am a Tallgrass Writing Workshop alumna. Some of my work has made it way to Legends of America and Guinea Pig Magazine. I’m currently researching other historic crimes and working on a novel set in Kansas.