The Midwest isn’t just rich with corn and cows. It’s also fertile story ground.

That’s where Newberry County Memorial Hospital nurse and fiction author Miriam Jones Bradley set her Christian mystery book for children, “The Double Cousins and the Mystery of the Missing Watch,” printed in July.

Bradley took frequent trips to her grandparents’ home in Nebraska, and repeatedly heard stories worth retelling.

While Bradley sat in her grandmother’s rocking chair, her grandfather, sitting in his rocking chair, told her stories about the past.

Bradley wanted to record her grandfather’s tales, so she joined the Black Hills Writers’ Group for help.

But the group’s advice steered Bradley to a new story line.

“Write what you know,” Bradley heard over and over.

So Bradley set aside her grandfathers’ stories for a later day, but kept the setting intact.

Her grandparents’ central Nebraska ranch with milk cows and musk thistle is where Bradley vacationed many summers as a young girl. She knew the area well.

Backdrop in place, Bradley wove in the true family mystery about her Great-Great-Grandpa Jones that went missing from his family in the late 1800s.

“He left to find work and they never heard from him again,” says Bradley.

Bradley’s family has theories of what may have happened to Jones. He could have just chosen not to come back, or been killed by Native Americans or just got sick and died, they say.

But whatever happened, Jones’ disappearance makes a good mystery.

In The Double Cousins book the five “double” cousins—doubly so because “two Jones kids married Eggers”—take on their grandfather’s challenge to link a watch to an answer about their missing relative.

The story is part real-life and part character “conglomeration.”

“A great-uncle, who really and truly is just like my great-uncle, is in the book,” she says.

But that’s the only cut-and-paste real-life character. The other book folk have personalities compiled from several people.

One of Bradley’s aunts, however, is still trying to find herself within the mystery’s pages to no avail, says the author.

And there’s also Slim, a character in The Double Cousins based on the homeless men Bradley met growing up.

Bradley’s father, a Baptist preacher, had a church near a railroad track intersection that became a safe haven for stowaway travelers.

Many wanted handouts, but there was one fellow who asked Bradley’s father for work. The man would take a job, then restlessly move on, only to return later.

“Complicating the whole thing is hired man ’Slim,’ who is a train jumper,” says Bradley.

Along with his baggage, Slim also carries along the book’s Christian value of forgiveness, because Slim left home on bad terms with his father. Slim has a hard time forgiving his dad, and a few of the cousins in the story have a hard time welcoming Slim.

But the “quiet stranger with an unusual background” indirectly teaches the young sleuths the importance of acceptance and forgiveness.

“Miriam,” Bradley says her preacher-father would always say, “there’s no point in not forgiving anyone, because it just hurts you.”

Bradley, who herself has led children’s church, Sunday school and summer camp, says the book is a good read for children ages 7 to 13. It’s also a good way for Sunday school teachers to end a lesson when the preacher is still preaching, she says.

But even younger youth enjoy hearing it read to them, and older fans like it, too, she says.

“I had a 92-year-old tell me it was awesome — and she wasn’t even related to me,” says Bradley laughing.

And Bradley herself was thrilled to see her work in print. While she and her husband drove out of town for a book tour, the Newberry County Memorial Hospital nurse was fixated on her newly-printed book.

“I can’t stop,” she told her husband. “I’m at the exciting part.”

“The Double Cousins and the Mystery of the Missing Watch” is the first in a series. Bradley plans to finish the second this year.

For copies, e-mail Bradley at mermly@gmail.com, or visit Books on Main in Newberry or online sellers.

Click on www.doublecousins.net for more information.

Author’s schedule

Children’s author Miriam Jones Bradley will visit two area elementary schools this week to discuss her book: Thursday at Reuben Elementary from 8:30—11 a.m.; and Friday at Whitmire Elementary from 8-10 a.m. to visit with the fourth and fifth graders.

She will sign copies Friday, 5-8 p.m., at Books on Main.