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Franklin College professor Click here Sons of the Dawn: A Basque Odyssey, has all the dusty bravado and high noon tension of a Wild West shoot-em-up. But it's more than a genre exercise. Due for January release by Click here, Nuwer's Western novel tackles weightier topics such as cultural diversity in 1890s Idaho, and the related issues of hazing and bullying (Nuwer is known internationally as an expert on bullying).

Sitting relaxed in denim and flannel as he devoured a turkey sandwich and sipped black coffee in a donut-county café, Nuwer talked with NUVO about his days as a pickup truck-and-typewriter freelancer scouring the Western landscape for stories.

After the interview, Nuwer followed the reporter, a former journo student of Nuwer's at Ball State University, to kick the tires of a used "C" class RV he thought might serve as his address for upcoming travels and research for his follow-up novel on Chinese miners in the West. The howling wind bounced sheets of rain off of a corrugated steel roof over our heads as Hank pondered whether his black lab Casey would go with its Travels with Charley-style furnishings.

NUVO: What compelled you to write a Western novel about sheep herders who hailed from a part of Idaho inhabited by Basque emigres?

Hank Nuwer: About 40 years ago, I read in a 19th-century Nevada newspaper that buckaroos [read: cowboys] captured a herder, and put him in the center of a ring of fire to kill him. At that time, irate cowboys who thought sheep were eating the good grazeland were driving sheep over cliffs to drive out the sheep ranchers and homesteaders. So the central image in my book is based on a true occurrence. If I've done my job, it is about one of the classic battles of the American West, the cattlemen vs. the sheep herders, many of them Basques from Spain and France. My idea in this novel and future novels is to highlight underrepresented minorities in the West as protagonists.

When I was a graduate student at Nevada-Reno, the very first course I took was Western American literature, and though I loved literature, I found grad school stultifying and creativity deadening in spite of my 3.9+ grade point. The head of the University of Nevada Press, Click here, probably the best Basque fiction writer of all time and a contributing writer with National Geographic, said, "Hank, you ought to quit grad school and go out and be a writer."

I quit school, went out to Los Angeles, and started writing. One of the proposals to various magazine editors was the culture of the Basques out west, so I abandoned my Topanga Canyon cabin, hopped in my pickup with camper, and went herding sheep with Basque herders out on the trail for a couple magazines.