Back Home

The sequel to Secondhand Summer continues Sam Barger's story with the homecoming of his older brother, now wounded from war, and the struggle for the two to understand and find each other again. It's 1968, and like any other junior in high school, Sam Barger's just trying to get by in classes and find a part-time job at the local pizza parlor, maybe chat up the pretty girl who also works there. But when his Marine Corps brother Joe comes back from the Vietnam War, life at home changes. By day Joe struggles with alcoholism and by night he battles night terrors. Sam just wants normalcy again but doesn't know how to close the rift between the brothers, especially once he questions their country's involvement overseas. Set in Southcentral Alaska in the 1960s, Back Home is a heartfelt story about the brothers and their struggles to come and understand each other. The book reveals the lasting effects of war on young people and draws parallels between a pivotal moment in history then to the contemporary wars and struggles today. Dan L. Walker grew up in Alaska with a brother who fought in the Vietnam War and returned home with PTSD. He is a high school teacher as well as an author, and has published blogs, essays, articles, and fiction in magazines and literary journals, including Alaska Magazine and the Journal of Geography. His first book, Secondhand Summer, represented the state of Alaska at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in 2017 and was on Alaska's Battle of the Books list.