April 19 at Lincoln South Rotary - Mignon Good Eberhart, Author of “Agatha Christie” of Nebraska

Dr. Rick Cypert was at Lincoln South Rotary Club on April 19, 2024. Dr. Cypert will tell us about Mignon Good Eberhart, the "Agatha Christie" of Nebraska.

Dr. Rick Cypert told us the story of Mignon Good Eberhart. Rick has done extensive research and written a book about Mignon - Mignon Good Eberhart: America’s Agatha Christie.

 

One central theme that we felt from Dr. Cypert's presentation - Mignon had a great imagination. Wherever she lived or worked, she would consider ideas for stories - imagining characters and settings.

 

Mignon attended Nebraska Wesleyan University. She was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta sorority and enjoyed her time there. But, she was interested in moving to Colorado to teach. She ended up working in a library and developed a new passion. She felt that a new story walked up to the desk every minute. Every person had a story - a situation - that could be developed into a story.

 

Rick talked about the golden age of mystery writers in the 1920's - 1930's. That is when Mignon got started. She created a character Nurse Sarah Keate who was a main character in her first book - and a number of books. He explained that Mignon spent some time in the hospital and, while there, experienced the quiet halls at night, then footsteps, odd sounds, and her imagination of what might be happening led to her book "The Patient in Room 18".

 

That got her started on a series of mystery novels. Her writing expanded to include romance. The main characters are female with locations that are often exotic.

 

She married Alanson Eberhart and they lived in a number of places, including the sandhills of Nebraska. Dr. Cypert shared another story of Mignon using her imagination to create a story. They were living in the sandhills, in November, a snowstorm brews, and they are stranded. In the story she created, the patriarch of the family dies and she leads people to understand that the death is suspicious.

 

Rick shared that Mignon was known for being able to create atmosphere and suspense. He read from her novel "The Dark Garden" and we could feel the atmosphere that she was describing,

 

Comparing some of her work to the TV series "Murder She Wrote", Dr. Cypert shared that Mignon wrote about a mystery-writer turned detective - Susan Dare in a short story series.

 

Mignon had a long writing career spanning about 60 years. She was highly paid for her work earning about $50,000 per year for her short stories alone. Besides short stories and novels, she has also written plays. One of her early plays was presented by the NWU theater department.

 

Dr. Cypert believes that Mignon was important for a number of reasons. She was a woman who learned how to navigate the male-dominated world of writing, publishing and also play-writing. When she began her career, Agatha Christie was popular - but Mignon held her own. Through her writing we are introduced to different societies. She lived in numerous locations throughout - not only the US but Internationally - but her Midwestern traits were never abandoned. She liked to write because of what it teaches us about the world.

 

Rick shared that, researching and writing about Mignon was, in itself, like solving a mystery.

 

 

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