Walker, Dale L. 1935-

(Dale Lee Walker)

PERSONAL:

Born August 3, 1935, in Decatur, IL; son of Russell Dale (in the armed forces) and Eileen M. Walker; married Alice McCord, September 30, 1960; children: Dianne, Eric, Christopher, Michael, John. Education: Texas Western College (now University of Texas at El Paso), B.A., 1962. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Protestant.

ADDRESSES:

Home—El Paso, TX. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, historian, and journalist. Freelance writer, 1960—; KTSM-TV, El Paso, TX, reporter, 1962-66; University of Texas at El Paso, director of News-Information Office, 1966-93; Texas Western Press, El Paso, director, 1985-93. Military service: U.S. Navy, 1955-59.

MEMBER:

Western Writers of America (president, 1992-94), Texas Institute of Letters, Authors Guild.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Special Spur Award, Western Writers of America, 1986, for five-year editorship of The Roundup; Spur Award, 1988, for best Western short nonfiction; Owen Wister Award, Western Writers of America, 2000; Spur Award, 2001, for Best Western Historical Book (Pacific Destiny); Spur Award for best Western short nonfiction, Western Writers of America, 2002, for "Killer of Pain's Transcontinental Journey."

WRITINGS:

(With Richard O'Connor) The Lost Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1967.

C.L. Sonnichsen: Grassroots Historian, Texas Western Press (El Paso, TX), 1972.

The Alien Worlds of Jack London (monograph), Wolf House Books (Minneapolis, MN), 1973.

(Editor) Howard A. Craig, Sunward I've Climbed, Texas Western Press (El Paso, TX), 1974.

Jack London, Sherlock Holmes, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (monograph), Alvin S. Fick (Amsterdam, NY), 1974.

Death Was the Black Horse: The Story of Rough Rider, Buckey O'Neill, Madrona Press (Austin, TX), 1975, published as Rough Rider: Buckey O'Neill of Arizona, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1997.

(Editor and author of introduction) Curious Fragments: Jack London's Tales of Fantasy Fiction, Kennikat (Port Washington, NY), 1975, published as Fantastic Tales, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1998.

(Editor and author of introduction) No Mentor but Myself: Jack London, the Writer's Writer, Kennikat (Port Washington, NY), 1979, published with revisions, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1998, 2nd edition, revised and expanded, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1999.

Only the Clouds Remain: Ted Parsons of the Lafayette Escadrille, Alandale (Amsterdam, NY), 1980.

Jack London and Conan Doyle: A Literary Kinship, Gaslight (Bloomington, IL), 1981.

(Editor and author of introduction) Will Henry's West, Texas Western Press (El Paso, TX), 1984.

(Editor and author of introduction) In a Far Country: Jack London's Western Tales, Green Hill (Ottawa, IL), 1986.

Januarius McGahan: The Life and Campaigns of an American War Correspondent, 1844-1878, Ohio University Press (Athens, OH), 1988.

Mavericks: Ten Uncorralled Westerners, Golden West (Phoenix, AZ), 1989.

(Editor and author of introduction) The Golden Spurs, Forge Books (New York, NY), 1992.

Legends and Lies: Great Mysteries of the American West, Forge Books (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor, with Elmore Leonard and Martin Harry Greenberg) The Western Hall of The Boys of '98: Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, Forge Books (New York, NY), 1998.

Bear Flag Rising: The Conquest of California, 1846, Forge Books (New York, NY), 1999.

Pacific Destiny: The Three-Century Journey to the Oregon Country, Forge Books (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Bill O'Neal and James A. Crutchfield) The Wild West, Publications International (Lincolnwood, IL), 2001.

(Editor) Westward: A Fictional History of the American West, Forge Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Eldorado: The California Gold Rush, Forge Books (New York, NY), 2003.

The Calamity Papers: Western Myths and Cold Cases, Forge Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Mary Edwards Walker: Above and Beyond, Forge Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Wine of Wizardry, by George Sterling, Pinion Press, 1962; Passing Through, edited by W. Burns Taylor and Richard Santelli, Santay Publishers, 1974; The Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West, edited by Howard Lamar, Crowell (New York, NY), 1977; An American for Lafayette: The Diaries of E.C.C. Genet, University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 1981; Uncommon Men and the Colorado Prairie, by Nell Brown Propst, Caxton (Caldwell, ID), 1992; The West That Was, Wings Books (New York, NY), 1993; In the Big Country, by John Jakes, Bantam (New York, NY), 1993; The Bride Wore Crimson, by Brian Woolley, Texas Western Press, 1993; New Trails, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1994; The American West, Grolier (Danbury, CT), 1995; Legends of the Old West, Publications International (Chicago, IL), 1995; and Wild West Show, Wings Books, 1995.

Contributor to PERIODICALS and newspapers, including Newsweek, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Modern Fiction Studies, Soldier of Fortune, Aviation Quarterly, New Mexico Magazine, Montana, Arizona Republic, Louis L'Amour's Western Magazine, and Baker Street Journal. Books editor, El Paso Times, 1979-85; editor, Roundup, 1980-85; author of column "Out West," Rocky Mountain News, 1989-2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Dale L. Walker has written many works on the history of the American West that have earned critical praise for their extensive detail and accessible narrative style. Among his best-received titles are The Boys of '98: Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, Bear Flag Rising: The Conquest of California, 1846, and Pacific Destiny: The Three-Century Journey to the Oregon Country.

The Boys of '98 is a history of Theodore Roosevelt's heroic Rough Riders, a volunteer cavalry regiment of the Spanish-American War made famous by their charge up San Juan Hill. While the Rough Riders gained lasting fame for their bravery in battle, they also suffered a high casualty rate—some thirty-seven percent were either killed or wounded. Colonel Roosevelt became a nationally known figure because of his role as their leader, publicity that later led to his running for and winning the presidency of the United States. A critic for Publishers Weekly described Walker's The Boys of '98 as "a human-oriented picture of the regiment, its camp life, battles and struggle with disease." Writing in Booklist, John Rowen remarked that "strong research and accessible writing make this study fresh and insightful." Walker first became interested in the topic of the Rough Riders in the early 1970s. At that time he was writing a biography of Arizonan lawman William O. "Buckey" O'Neill, a Rough Rider who was killed in battle. In the course of his research, Walker interviewed several remaining members of the Rough Riders, interviews he later made use of in The Boys of '98, published to coincide with the centennial anniversary of the Spanish-American War.

In Bear Flag Rising Walker chronicles the events leading up to America's annexation of California in 1846. At the time, California was a province of Mexico, but many Americans had settled there to farm or ranch. When these Americans became disenchanted with Spanish rule, they began to rebel. Walker focuses specifically on the actions and motivations of three key players in the annexation: John Charles Fremont, Commodore Robert Field Stockton, and General Stephen Watts Kearney. Together, these three men maneuvered events in California in such a way as to make the Mexican colony an integral part of the United States. "Utilizing scholarly resources," wrote Terri P. Summey in Library Journal, "Walker presents an unbiased account of the conquest." "The author," Margaret Flanagan noted in Booklist, "places the key battles and events of the California campaign firmly in historical context."

Pacific Destiny tells the story of how the Oregon territory became a part of America, tracing the region's history from its discovery in the sixteenth century by the Spanish to its settlement in the nineteenth century by Americans following the Oregon Trail. Walker's approach is to highlight the major figures who played parts in Oregon's development. A Publishers Weekly critic explained: "Walker constructs a compelling narrative that is a string of unusual profiles rather than an analytic account of a major event in American history." Walker's account is, according to a Kirkus Reviews contributor, "a lively, readable history of the exploration and settlement of the Pacific Northwest." Walker told American Western Magazine online, "To me, the great ‘journey’ to the Old Oregon Country is the greatest of Western American sagas."

Januarius McGahan: The Life and Campaigns of an American War Correspondent, 1844-1878, delineates the life and career of Ohio-born journalist McGahan, largely unknown today but whose reporting from Europe and Central Asia was pivotal in developing American attitudes and opinions toward those regions. As a battlefield correspondent, McGahan reported on atrocities committed by Turkish soldiers against native Bulgarian civilians during the Bulgarian uprising in 1876. These dispatches created an international sensation and illustrated how Britain and Prime Minister Disraeli elected to do nothing to stop Turkey's actions. He reported from Brussels and Germany during the Franco-Prussian war; he witnessed the Russian Army's invasion of the walled city of Khiva in Turkestan; and he traveled to the Arctic in search of evidence from the ill-fated expedition of Sir John Franklin. Walker provides considerable material from McGahan's reports and journalistic pieces, showing the reporter's works to be "models of descriptive clarity and narrative power," noted Bruce Allen in Smithsonian. "The telling of this irresistible tale gains double impact from Dale Walker's own considerable writing skills," Allen remarked, and concluded that Walker "has done Januarius MacGahan all the honor that has long been due him."

In Legends and Lies: Great Mysteries of the American West, Walker sets out to explore some of the enduring legends of the West, considering stories of people, places, and events that may have suffered from elaboration and embellishment through years of telling and retelling. Wild West reviewer Leon C. Metz noted that "it isn't Dale Walker's intention to necessarily resolve these mysteries. Instead he separates the reasonable theories from the wacky, the possibilities from the idiocies." Walker examines the historical record to find out what happened to the notorious Black Bart, highway robber in California. He notes that Boston Corbett allegedly shot John Wilkes Booth in a barn, but investigates stories that indicate Corbett did not slay Booth after all. He also looks at the stories behind the Lost Dutchman Mine in Phoenix, Arizona; the death of Native American leader Crazy Horse; and the facts of the battle of the Little Big Horn and Custer's fatal failure there. Walker's book "will captivate anyone who loves historical mysteries, the behind-the-scene intrigues that still puzzle and bedevil us today," Metz concluded.

Though most of Walker's works are firmly grounded in the realities of nonfiction, he is also aware of the power of a rousing fictional tale of the Old West. In Westward: A Fictional History of the American West, editor Walker presents twenty-eight original western stories, written in commemoration of the fiftieth year of the Western Writers of America. The stories present a rough chronology of the history of the American West, from Don Coldsmith's story about the first horse ever seen by a Native American to Loren Estleman's take on political corruption in the Old West. Other stories cover familiar western staples such as outlaws, gunfighters, grieving widows, and hunters. The collection demonstrates the "vitality and the diversity of the western genre" and also the "enduring appeal of the short story," commented Wes Lukowsky in Booklist.

Eldorado: The California Gold Rush contains a broad history of the people, places, and events that made up the frenzied search for gold in the middle of the nineteenth century. Walker looks at the multiple personalities, both well-meaning and nefarious, that streamed into California, looking for easy riches. He notes that prospectors and fortune-seekers came not only from the eastern areas of the United States, but from many other countries as well. He profiles John August Sutter, a German whose infamous mill became the site of the largest gold strike in California in 1848. It includes reports of the arduous journeys and difficult conditions endured by gold-seekers, and how one in five perished within their search. Walker notes the irony of the fact that many of the key figures of the gold rush, including Samuel Brannan, a landowner and tycoon; James Marshall, who first discovered California gold in the American River; and John Sutter himself, died in poverty, without the benefit of the riches they had helped others to find. Walker's "narrative is swift and accurate, and the author does a good job of bringing musty historical figures to life," commented a KirkusReviews critic. Throughout the book, Walker is "enthralled with the frontier adventures" that are an integral part of stories of the gold rush, but he "never ignores the toll on humans and nature that exceeded any benefit," commented Tyler D. Johnson in the New York Times Book Review.

Mary Edwards Walker: Above and Beyond tells the life story of Civil War-era physician, women's rights activist, and medical reformer Walker, the only woman to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. An iconoclastic figure in her time, Walker struggled to become a physician and build a practice when female doctors were a rarity and when Union Army officers would not commission a woman to serve. She was a vigorous opponent of what she saw as rampant, indiscriminate amputation by medical practitioners during the Civil War. Little interested in the customs of her day, she was criticized for her actions and behavior, but was a dedicated fighter for the rights of those who could not advocate for themselves. Mary Walker's limited writings, quoted in the book, "melds with Walker's prose in a colorful portrait of an uppity woman" who "inspires and motivates," commented Donna Chavez in Booklist.

Walker once told CA: "I have been writing professionally since 1960, my freelancing done after hours while holding full-time jobs in news work and university staff positions. I retired in 1993 and now write full time. Most of my work has been periodical nonfiction—magazine articles, reviews, criticism, literary and historical studies, and newspaper work. I have been published in 130 different PERIODICALS, and my books have been, for the most part, outgrowths of the periodical work.

"My best work has been in biography—book-length works on the nineteenth-century war correspondent Januarius MacGahan (which I regard as my best work), Rough Rider William O. ‘Buckey’ O'Neill, and the American radical writer John Reed (author of Ten Days That Shook the World), and hundreds of shorter, biographical pieces for magazines. I have published a great deal about Jack London, a life-long interest of mine and the greatest influence I've had as a writer—a book-length annotated bibliography, three edited collections of his stories, a book-length literary study.

"I write every day, a minimum of four hours, most often longer, and while I have never written much more than my signature in longhand, I began writing on an antique upright Royal, graduated to an IBM Selectric (which I swore was the end of all technology) and presently use, indeed am wedded to, a word processor.

"The writers I admire are a strange mix: I regard the British writers George MacDonald Fraser and Jan Morris as the finest historical stylists in the English language today; I greatly admire the historical novels by the late Will Henry (Henry Wilson Allen); I love the language of certain British military historians—Sir John Fortescue and Alexander Kinglake among them; I am in awe of the work of [Herman] Melville and Cormac McCarthy; I love such mystery-thriller writers as Ed McBain, Lawrence Block, and the late John D. MacDonald, the fantasies of Jack Vance, many Western and other genre writers who are great stylists. I am, and have been most of my working life, absorbed by nineteenth-century military history."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Studies International, October, 2001, Matt Weiser, review of No Mentor but Myself: Jack London on Writers and Writing, p. 103.

Booklist, April 15, 1998, John Rowen, review of The Boys of '98: Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, p. 1425; June 1, 1999, Margaret Flanagan, review of Bear Flag Rising: The Conquest of California, 1846, p. 1780; June 1, 2003, Wes Lukowsky, review of Westward: A Fictional History of the American West, p. 1747; November 15, 2004, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Calamity Papers: Western Myths and Cold Cases, p. 550; June 1, 2005, Donna Chavez, review of Mary Edwards Walker: Above and Beyond, p. 1736.

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 1997, review of Legends and Lies: Great Mysteries of the American West; April 15, 1998, review of The Boys of '98; July 1, 2000, review of Pacific Destiny: The Three-Century Journey to the Oregon Country, p. 948; November 1, 2002, review of Eldorado: The California Gold Rush, p. 1603; April 15, 2003, review of Westward, p. 569.

Library Journal, April 15, 1998, Edwin B. Burgess, review of The Boys of '98, p. 96; June 15, 1999, Terri P. Summey, review of Bear Flag Rising, p. 91; May 15, 2003, Ken St. Andre, review of Westward, p. 130.

New York Times Book Review, March 2, 2003, Tyler D. Johnson, "Books in Brief: Nonfiction," review of Eldorado.

Publishers Weekly, April 13, 1998, review of The Boys of '98, p. 62; May 3, 1999, review of Bear Flag Rising, p. 60; July 31, 2000, review of Pacific Destiny, p. 86.

Smithsonian, March, 1989, Bruce Allen, review of Januarius MacGahan: The Life and Campaigns of an American War Correspondent, 1844-1878, p. 185.

Wild West, April, 1998, Leon C. Metz, review of Legends and Lies, p. 62; June, 1998, Candy Mouton, "Many of the Boys of '98 Were Cowboys and Frontiersmen Who Wanted a Piece of the Action," p. 64; August, 2000, Johnny D. Boggs, review of Bear Flag Rising, p. 61.

ONLINE

American Western Magazine,http://readthewest.com/ (December 10, 2006), Taylor Fogarty, "An Interview with Dale L. Walker"; "Dale L. Walker Discusses Pacific Destiny: The Three-Century Journey to the Oregon Country."

ReadWest.com,http://www.readwest.com/ (December 10, 2006), Richard S. Wheeler, "An Interview with Dale L. Walker."