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Brief excerpt:

Franklin College professor Hank Nuwer has built a national reputation and become an outspoken crusader against hazing in all its forms.

The associate professor for Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism has written articles and four books about hazing in his long academic career.

Long after sundown when he’s not working on serious, scholarly missives, Nuwer’s been writing a literary Western novel inspired by time he spent “trailing” sheep with migrant Basque herders in 1979. “Sons of the Dawn: A Basque Odyssey,” published by Shalako Press, will be available in print and ebook in January.

Nuwer, 67, Waldron, credits the “bloody red pen” of his ex-wife and copy editor Jenine Howard for making his novel “leaner, tighter and cleaner.”

Nuwer talks about Westerns, the Basque region of Spain and his inspiration for the novel.

Question: Why did you write a Western novel?

Nuwer: Once, long ago, I took leave of my senses and decided that getting a Ph.D. at Nevada-Reno was a great idea. My two main doctoral areas were the New Journalism and Western American Literature. One of the guest speakers in a Western Lit class was the great American novelist Wallace Stegner who wrote “The Big Rock Candy Mountain,” and I interviewed him and went out to dinner with him and Bobby Clark, the son of Walter Van Tilburg Clark of “The Oxbow Incident” fame. I vowed then and there at that very table that I would write a literary Western. A mere 43 years later, I have written one. And no, I never got that Ph.D. Instead, a hazing death happened at Nevada-Reno right before I quit the program, and my life’s course as a writer took a turn I never had wished for and certainly never expected.

Question: How did your sabbatical in the Basque Country of Spain inspire you?

Nuwer: The Guernica Peace Museum (Museo de la Paz de Gernika) may be one of the last thoughts on my mind when I leave this world. It affected me so. In one exhibit the floor is glass and underneath is the actual rubble of Hitler’s bombing — things such as a child’s shoes, a rosary, everyday things charred and burnt. There were very old people from Guernica who had survived the bombing, and they were crying so hard. The museum used red stage lighting to make it seem like the room was afire. It was an astonishing experience. Last January, while in Madrid on Franklin College business, I saw Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece “Guernica,” and the sabbatical experience in Guernica made that painting all the more inspiring and meaningful for me.