David DeKok writes non-fiction books about crises in small American towns and the people who live in them. He has written two books about the Centralia (Pa.) mine fire, Unseen Danger and Fire Underground, and one about a deadly typhoid epidemic in 1903 that devastated Ithaca, New York, and Cornell University. His most recent book, Murder in the Stacks, is about the murder in the Penn State library in 1969 of a young woman from his hometown, Betsy Aardsma.