Robert C. Conner

Robert C. Conner wrote the 2026 book The Detective and Dorothy Day, a mystery thriller and historical novel set in 1975 New York state. He met Day in the mid 1970s when he was in the Catholic Worker movement. Conner's previous novel The Last Circle of Ulysses Grant was published in 2018. He is also the author of two biographies published by Casemate: James Montgomery: Abolitionist Warrior (2022), and General Gordon Granger: The Savior of Chickamauga and the Man Behind "Juneteenth". (The publisher put Juneteenth in quotation marks because when that book came out in 2013, most people were unfamiliar with the word.)

Conner is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of New York University. A former journalist, he organized and led a unit of The Newspaper Guild at his first job in the field. He won two first-place writing awards from the New York Associated Press Association for newspapers with circulation between 50,000 and 200,000. From 2005 to 2008, he was state Capitol reporter in Albany for the Daily/Sunday Gazette of Schenectady. Other jobs have ranged from bicycle messenger to drug counselor. Bob Conner and his wife Barbara were married in 1984 and have lived since then in upstate New York. They have three children and six grandchildren, and remain active in community service.