Meet the author of West River at upcoming readings and book presentations

Life in a small town can be cutthroat – at least for crime teacher Jane Newell.

She is the heroine of author Jolene Stratton Philo’s West River Mystery Series. Philo comes to the Black Hills to talk about the rural community in western South Dakota that inspired Jane’s adventures.

The cozy mysteries are set in the 1970s in a fictional area that closely resembles Harding County, South Dakota. Philo draws on her own experiences in Harding County, which has been described as “Murder She Wrote” meets “Little House on the Prairie” meets “Mary Tyler Moore.”

Readers can meet Philo at Spearfish, where she will be giving a reading and signing books at Henry’s Books on Tuesday, July 23 from 12-2pm.

Philo will be at the Rapid City Public Library on Wednesday, July 24 at 5:30 p.m. for a book signing and to present a program about her West River Mystery Series. She will show slides of Harding County, share anecdotes about her years living there and talk about how she researches her books.

Philo will be offering her West River Mystery Series books and mugs for sale at her performances in Spearfish and Rapid City.

Philo and her husband now live in Polk City, Iowa, near Des Moines. The couple lived in western South Dakota from 1978 to 1985, and Philo said she still has fond memories of their time in Harding County. Philo taught at Sky Ranch for Boys for two years. She also taught at Camp Crook country schools in the Harding County School District for five years.

Philo’s West River Mystery Series debuted in 2022 with “See Jane Run!” Readers meet Jane after she moves from Sioux City, Iowa, to a remote corner of South Dakota. She’s a rural schoolteacher in the fictional town of Little Missouri, population 92. She also becomes an amateur detective as she tracks down the perpetrator of a hit-and-run.

“And because she’s single and young, there are a lot of single guys in the neighborhood who keep checking her out, which always happened when a new teacher came to Harding County,” Philo chuckled.

The series continues with “See Jane Sing!” Jane plans a Christmas program and discovers a dead body while looking for a Christmas tree. In “See Jane Dance!” her well-meaning community plays matchmaker by signing her up for square dancing lessons – but she ends up with an unhappy date as Valentine’s Day approaches.

In every book, Philo says, Jane suffers some injury, but nothing stops her from solving mysteries.

“Jane is becoming more and more involved and helping the sheriff with investigations, whether he wants it or not,” Philo says, though the sheriff is increasingly appreciative of Jane’s talents and her dream of getting a degree in criminal justice.

The fourth book in the series, “See Jane Dig!”, is released on October 1. The book plays on Harding County’s reputation as the Tyrannosaurus Rex capital of the world.

Jane takes her class to a new dinosaur dig site 12 miles east of Little Missouri, where a team of students is working. When someone is attacked, Jane sets out to find the culprit. In book four, the local sheriff has helped Jane set up her own small forensics lab so she can help with investigations.

“The fun part about that book was the research into it. I didn’t know much about what dinosaurs looked like in the ’70s,” Philo said.

A sold-out book by Jack Horner described a dig he conducted in eastern Montana in the early 1980s where he found nests containing dinosaur eggs. Philo learned how the team set up camp at the dig site.

Philo then delved into some hands-on research at the Pioneer Trails Regional Museum in Bowman, N.D., which offers Dig-For-A-Day tours. Philo was able to talk to a geologist, clean bits of fossilized material, and learn about the tools used in excavations in 1977 and 1978.

“That really helped me write with more knowledge,” she said.

The West River Mystery Series transports readers back to 1977 and 1978, when Philo and her husband moved to Harding County. The books reflect many of Philo’s own memories and experiences from her life there.

Although Philo grew up in northwest Iowa, moving with her husband to Harding County “was a big culture shock.”

“It was cowboy ranch country and that was a huge (difference) … and yet the people were very welcoming and included us in the community,” Philo said. “Everybody was gardening and everybody was canning and everybody was hanging their clothes on the line … and things like that. It was a real sense of community.”

Philo said the books are faithful to the era in terms of technology, equipment and even some of the locations, such as the red-brick Rapid City Hospital that existed in the late 1970s.

“We moved to a town where they had just switched from a telephone operator to a regular rotary phone, so I included a telephone operator and her husband in the stories of the West River Mystery,” Philo said.

Miles of winding gravel roads, weekly square dancing lessons, and lots of activities that revolved around food and cooking are among Philo’s fondest memories of Harding County. Weaving her own experiences into Jane’s stories is part of the fun of writing the West River Mystery Series.

“It’s like I’m going back to where we used to live and I can be there within five minutes of starting to write, and I can be with characters who are like the people we know and still love in Harding County, and I can experience that sense of connection and community again,” Philo said.

“The other thing I love is that I can write something that’s fun and hopeful and have a bunch of people with disabilities as the main characters in the story,” she said. “That’s an underrepresented group in most fiction – they’re on the sidelines, they’re watching, they’re not doing anything. In my books, they’re fully involved. These characters take on lives of their own.”

Philo expects there to be a total of 10 or 11 books in the West River Mystery series, and she is already working on the fifth book, “See Jane Ride!”

“It’s going to take place partly at the motorcycle rally in Sturgis. How can you write a book set in western South Dakota and not have the rally?” Philo said.

For more information about Philo and the West River Mystery series, visit jolenephilo.com.