PRO CONNECT
Jan Walker is the author of several published books, editorial director at Plicata Press (a regional Indie press with 11 published authors to date), and retired community college teacher. She spent 18 years teaching adult felons in female and male prisons where she developed courses and wrote curriculum to meet the population’s specific needs.
Looking beyond a felon's crime to his or humanity is wonderful training for character development in both fiction and memoir. Jan draws on that in her writing. She is known for bringing characters to life, and for creating settings that further enhance and define characters.
She has presented at writers’ conferences as author, small press publisher, and editor. She has coordinated and directed local conferences, and presented professionally at national events. After retiring from teaching, she volunteered inside a women’s reentry prison where she worked directly with offenders and their family members to prepare them for the woman’s release and reentry into the family and community. She currently works with local writers’ groups on preparing manuscripts for publication.
“Walker's characters and keen observations bring the town alive, leaving readers with a deep understanding of the people and the challenges they faced during a tumultuous era.”
– Kirkus Reviews
Walker’s (Romar Jones Takes a Hike, 2012, etc.) Depression-era novel offers a microcosm of small-town 1930s America.
The tale opens in November 1932 as the citizens of Burke Bay, on the banks of Washington state’s Puget Sound, prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving. Seeking work and a chance to cash in on the area’s lucrative distilleries, a dapper Farley Price arrives in his fancy automobile with his timid wife, Eleanor, and their young daughter, Hannah. They’re soon welcomed by the well-respected Helmer and Ebbe Persson, who hire Farley to harvest turkeys. But when Price’s violent drunkenness and underhanded business plans threaten the community’s stability, Burke Bay residents rally to protect Eleanor and Hannah. Several subplots add dimension to the main story, including schoolteacher Maeva Swanson’s rocky relationship with longtime beau Axel Jenson as she bucks tradition and asserts her independence. Third-generation distiller Orval Blevins, in particular, is a truly memorable character; Walker deftly reveals his story as Blevins struggles to balance his desire to continue his family’s traditional livelihood with his wife’s demands that he adjust to the post-Prohibition marketplace and devise a suitable business for their son, Theodore, to inherit. A quirky pair of bachelor brothers, Hauk and Lang Nordlund, around whom two love triangles develop, help bring the story to its resolution. The close-knit Scandinavian community of Burke Bay could be nearly any ethnic enclave facing the challenges of prolonged unemployment, economic uncertainty, and intergenerational conflict and acculturation. But Walker’s characters and keen observations bring the town alive, leaving readers with a deep understanding of the people and the challenges they faced during a tumultuous era. The author also intriguingly shows how the production and consumption of alcohol influences individual people, families and the community at large.
A solidly researched, artfully written novel that’s both entertaining and educational.
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0984840052
Page count: 336pp
Publisher: Plicata Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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