Sarah Andrews

Sarah Andrews (1951 – July 24, 2019) was an American geologist and author of twelve science-based mystery novels and several short stories. Many of the novels feature "clear-thinking, straight-talking" forensic geologist Em Hansen and take place in the Rocky Mountains region of the United States. Her novels have been praised for their combination of science and detective work within the mystery genre. Andrews, her husband Damon, and son Duncan died in a plane crash in Nebraska on July 24, 2019.

Life and career

Sarah Andrews was born in 1951. She grew up in Connecticut and in Ossining, New York. Her father was an artist and art teacher and her mother, a teacher of English and comparative religions. Since childhood, she had a passion for exploring the great outdoors, including sailing with her father and wandering solo through the woods and fields during the family's long summers in rural Maine.

Andrews left New York to attend Colorado College. Her aptitude inspired her to earn a BA in geology. In her work, she studied modern sand dunes in order to understand ancient sand dune rock formations. Andrews has won numerous other awards for her writings, including the Geological Society of America President's Medal and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Journalism Award, now called the Geosciences in the Media Award. Other of her awards include: 2009 Louis T. Benezet Award from Colorado College 2008 Fellow of the Geological Society of America 2006 Antarctic Service Medal 2003 Special Award of the Association of Engineering Geologists 2001 James T. Shea Award of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers 1997 Journalism Award of the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists

Death Andrews, along with her husband and son, died in a private plane crash in Chadron, Nebraska, on July 24, 2019, on the way home from an air show in Wisconsin. Andrews' life and works are memorialized by the Geological Society of America. The Sarah Andrews Brown Papers are archived in the Special Collections of Charles L. Tutt Library, Colorado College, Colorado Springs.

Inspiration and influences

In one of her jobs as a geologist, Andrews entertained herself during dull meetings by "picking someone across the table as a murder victim and then trying to figure out who killed him." These imaginings and her colleagues' positive reception of them led to her publishing mystery novels.

The white-collar crimes in Andrews' first three novels are drawn from real events that she or colleagues observed. The murders, on the other hand, are included for the drama.

Geologist Gene Shinn "worked for years on Andrews" to incorporate into one of her novels his theory of dust floating from somewhere in Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. On September 11, 2001, she called his office, and the conversation inspired her book Killer Dust.

Andrews cites Dorothy Sayers, Tony Hillerman, and Agatha Christie as favorite mystery writers. Her whitepaper "Spatial Thinking with a Difference: An Unorthodox Treatise on the Mind of the Geologist" describes how she uses episodic simulation to understand past and future geologic events. She has considered how geologists act as detectives and how her experience as a woman impacted her approach to geology. And in a short note on geophilosophy, she points out that it is "important to know that science involves not just the collection of facts, but also a variety of logics and reasonings, some of which vary from one division of science to another."