Nebraska Authors

Rhodes moved to New Mexico in 1881 with his parents, and spent much of his life in that state. His work was published in newspapers and magazines, including Land of Sunshine, Out West, and McClure's. His longer works were serialized in The Saturday Evening Post and some were later published in book form. Though he was a completely self-taught writer, his western fiction was much admired. A New York Times reviewer considered him a peer of Owen Wister, and historians (Bernard DeVoto, for one) and critics praised his realism and literary skill. Despite his literary success, he was never paid much for his writing and died broke. He was buried, at his own request, at the summit of the San Andres Mountains on the land of his old ranch home.

BYU has a Rhodes manuscript collection and the Alamagordo, NM Public Library has a special collection of his published work.

Rhodes belonged to the special generation of writers of westerns who experienced something of the Old West in its last years, see also George W. Barrington and George Shedd. Other prolific Nebraska writers of the western include Wayne C. Lee and Edwin Booth.

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A well known criminal defense attorney and founder of the Berry Law Firm in Lincoln, NE. Berry attended Stanford University, Infantry Officer School at Fort Benning, GA, and the Judge Advocate General School in Charlottesville, VA. During his service, in 1968 and 1969, Berry was the chief defense counsel for II Field Force Vietnam, the largest general court martial jurisdiction for American forces in Vietnam. He also served as defense counsel with the 101st Airborne, the 82nd Airborne, the 1st Infantry Division, the 1st Cavalry Division, and other units. His Vietnam memoir, Those Gallant Men, 1983, recounts his efforts to defend the commander of the Green Berets and some of his officers against murder and conspiracy charges. The book was a Military Book Club selection for the Book of the Month, and is considered an important historical document on the Green Berets trial. Berry has written prize winning poetry and was the lead author of a book on the use of forensic science in criminal cases.

From 1956-1960 Berry studied poetry with Yvor Winters and prose with Wallace Stegner at Stanford University.

Heritage Room collections include three versions of the typescript manuscript for In the House of Our Friends, 1983 and the proof edition of Those Gallant Men.

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Born in Denmark, Winther grew up in Weeping Water, Nebraska. Though he left the state at age 18, all but one of his novels was set in Nebraska. He won fame and an enduring international literary reputation with his trilogy about Danish immigration to Nebraska, (the Grimsen Trilogy) which has been translated into Danish. In an early autobiographical sketch (1936), Winther wrote that "My first novel... did not include the name of Nebraska by accident. Nebraska in that title represents something very near to my inner life .... Nebraska remains for me the source of my creative life." Winther was a close friend of Nobel Prize winning American playwright Eugene O'Neill and well acquainted with his beautiful, fiery and unpredictable wife Carlotta Monterey. Winther's 1934 book, Eugene O'Neill, A Critical Study remains an important view of O'Neill's life and writing. The sympathy between the two writers seemed to reflect similar efforts to portray human struggle against unfriendly and amoral social and natural worlds.

The Danish American Archive and Library (originally at the now defunct Dana College), in Blair, Nebraska has a Sophus Keith Winther collection, and the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana, Bloomington (where Winther's brother, Oscar Osborn Winther taught history) also has a Sophus Keith Winther Collection, with an online listing of materials.

Heritage Room collections include a signed photograph, pictured here, and some letters.

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