Don Nothstine

About the Author: 

Upon concluding a successful thirty-year career in university level teaching, mostly at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri, Don retired and began examining his list of activities that would occupy the next stage of his life. Traveling with his wife, enjoying his three children and their families, and catching up on neglected relationships occupied the earliest stages of retirement. Of course golfing with friends, avidly following the St. Louis Cardinals, and renewing a long ignored interest in Civil War history were also high on the list. 

Then one day, a small cemetery he had driven past for years on his way to and from school again caught his eye. Perusal of a related collection of nineteenth century newspaper articles compiled by a local historian further fueled his curiosity. As he investigated, he became convinced there was more to the story. Possessing an active imagination, he soon found himself wanting to fill in what he saw as the blank spaces necessary to complete it. With that, a ten-year project was conceived and after countless setbacks and incalculable learning, Died Innocent was delivered.



Don Nothstine made his debut in the world of fiction writers with his new novel, Died Innocent, on October 16, 2016.

It is the story of a rural doctor in Missouri in the late 1800s, who falls prey to an assassin's bullet. Died Innocent takes readers on a wonderfully intriguing path toward the truth, to identify and bring to justice the doctor's killer . It is based upon a true story.

Died Innocent is available on Amazon.com. It is published through Amazing Things Press of St. Joseph, Missouri.

In 2016, Don Nothstine and Susan Cronk co-authored an anthology of infamous crimes that occurred within Nodaway County, Missouri between 1872 and 1931. 

The book, Justice in Nodaway County: 1872-1931, includes ten essays detailing the accounts of those crimes and their final dispositions for the accused perpetrator. 

Nodaway County, like nearly every other county in every state in America and nearly every city and village in countries around the world, has experienced more than a fair share of heinous crimes. Where people of varied beliefs, different moral codes (or the lack there of) and personal ambitions coexist there's no doubt that clashes will occur. Unfortunately, in some of those clashes people ended up severely disabled or dead. 

The outcomes of these ten cases vary from one to the next and were very much dependent on the viciousness of the crime and the emotional scarring inflicted upon the social order. In some cases vigilante justice was applied. In others the accused went to trial, sometimes more than once, and faced either legal execution, incarceration, or acquittal.

Justice in Nodaway County is Don's first work of nonfiction and Susan Cronk's third. Readers of true crime will, no doubt, find the book interesting and may just find themselves trying the cases over and again in their own minds.