Michael T.

Hinkemeyer

Novelist Michael T. Hinkemeyer, 79, a full-time resident of East Hampton since 1996, passed away late on Thanksgiving night, November 28, at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, after over a year of declining health.

He is mourned by his wife of 52 years, Arlene Hinkemeyer, their daughter Ellen and her husband Brett Kotheimer of Hermosa Beach, California; son Jonathan and wife Tamra Hinkemeyer and granddaughter Hannah Hinkemeyer of Lake Forest, Illinois; brothers David and Richard, sister Karen, and nieces and nephews.

Born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on October 18, 1940, to Ralph Hinkemeyer and Melania Kuhn, he always said he witnessed the end of the Midwestern frontier era, growing up on a 200-acre farm, driving the huge Belgian draft horses and then the tractors that did the fieldwork, and attending a one-room schoolhouse, with no plumbing, which is now a museum.

Receiving a B.A. in history from St. John's University in Minnesota in 1962, he served as a U.S. Army commissary officer, 1962-64, stationed in Germany, then returned to attend graduate school, receiving a Master of Arts in Teaching History degree in 1966, and a Ph.D. in Education in 1971—both from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Having met his wife on the M.A.T. program, they married in 1967, and the couple moved to New York in 1971 when he was hired as an assistant professor at Queens College.

Always interested in becoming a professional novelist, he seriously read the classic American writers like Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, also Updike, Malamud, Bellow and Philip Roth. And what would prove influential later, he marveled at the historical romance "Forever Amber" by Kathleen Winsor.

Having earlier written poetry and short stories, he started writing novels, selling his first book, "The Dark Below," a suspense novel, "over the transom" without an agent, to Fawcett Books in 1974. The couple moved to Manhasset, where he and his wife raised their two children, and he left academics in 1976 to write full time, publishing a total of 21 titles—some in the suspense and mystery genres under his own name, and seven historical romances under the pen name Vanessa Royall, given to him by publisher Dell Books. Two of his favorite novels were "The Fields of Eden" (Putnam's, 1977) and "A Time to Reap" (St. Martin's Press, 1984), each featuring a small-town Minnesota sheriff he created named Emil Whippletree. Altogether, his books were translated into nine languages, and in 2014 the seven historical romances were re-published as e-books by Diversion Books.

He followed national politics closely, read widely in history, and was known for having a prodigious memory.

His manuscripts and papers library is located at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota.

A memorial visitation will take place on Sunday, December 15, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. at Yardley & Pino Funeral Home, 94 Pantigo Rd., East Hampton.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to a charity of one's choice, or to the Stony Brook Foundation/Pollock-Krasner House in Springs, East Hampton (information available at www.pkhouse.org ), where Michael Hinkemeyer served as a docent for over 10 years.