William Rainbolt – Bill – has created a versatile career in a variety of fields: reporting and writing as a professional newspaper journalist and freelance writing; teaching for nearly four decades at college and university levels; earning a doctorate in American history; serving in lay ministry and hospital chaplaincy; publishing an historical novel set in Texas in 1836; and serving in the U.S. Navy.

Recently, Bill finished his second historical novel, The Killing of Hannah Doyle, a mystery set in the Depression Summer of 1934 and occurring primarily in the Lower Hudson Valley and Brooklyn. The Depression was one of Bill’s’ areas of interest for a doctorate.

Hannah Doyle draws from extensive research in order to weave a richly detailed narrative of the Depression into an intriguing plot about why a young woman is murdered, and why hers is the first of three. The case turns into one of the most perplexing investigations that New York State Police Sgt. Dave Lewin has faced in thirteen years on the force.

The other two victims are men with widely disparate lives who seem to have nothing in common with Hannah, a 24-year-old vibrant, talented dress designer at Eleanor Roosevelt’s pet project, Camp Tera, a bucolic rest-and-training camp for destitute women from New York City. He is now submitting this manuscript to agents and editors.

Bill’s first novel, Moses Rose: A Tale of the Alamo and Survivors, was published commercially in 1996 by Dan River Press, and was reissued as an eBook in 2016 available on Kindle, Nook, and others. When first published, Moses Rose was described by The Dallas Morning News as an “imaginative tale in which Rose must deal with many different meanings of heroism, survival, loneliness, and love.”

His film history dissertation, Images of Journalism in Film 1946-1976, earned recognition as a Dissertation of Distinction. His master’s thesis, The History of Underground Communication in Russia Since the 17th Century, was published as a monograph.

A native of Texas, Bill has lived also in Turkey, New Jersey, and New York, where he resides now in the Upper Hudson Valley.

Bill maintains memberships in The Authors Guild, the Spiritual Writers Network, and Spiritual Directors International.