Who is Dan L Walker?
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Dan L Walker is an Alaskan homesteaders’ son who grew up to become a teacher and a writer.  He has worked as a chef, innkeeper, merchant seaman, fisherman, and carpenter.  Drawn from these varied – and storied – experiences he has published blogs http://mybearlake.blogspot.com/, essays, professional articles, and fiction in magazines, literary journals, and on-line.  Dan has over thirty years in education and was named Teacher of the Year for Alaska in 1999.  Today, Dan works with schools in rural Alaska and shares life on a lake near Seward Alaska with his college sweetheart and muse, Madelyn.  Dan has been a member of 49 Writers for two years.  His writing workshops and consulting work take him throughout Alaska from Sitka to Barrow to Perryville, where he is devoted to working with teachers and students and rewarded by experiencing the remote Alaska that few people get to know.  Secondhand Summer is published in paperback by Alaska Northwest Books.

“Secondhand Summer is based on my own experience when I had to move to Anchorage from our homestead near Ninilchik after my father died. It was a summer of great change and adventure for a boy from the woods to move to the big city. Many of the experiences are very real, but it is a novel.  I worked with for years as a teacher, and in the process of developing this book with my editor, I realized how important it is to write books that boys want to read, our most reluctant readers. I also want the book to be sophisticated enough that it would engage adults. I think it tells a good story of life in 1965 on Government Hill in Anchorage.”  — the author

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