But perhaps the best review so far was the impromptu praise from his big brother, a physician who was in Sitka this week on business at SEARHC.

"I love it," said Hugh Straley, 65. "It's a page turner -- I wish I were reading it right now."

Straley's first six books were crime fiction starring the Sitka private investigator and recovering alcoholic Cecil Younger. The first book netted Straley, 54, the coveted Shamus Award for best first private investigator novel. His subsequent books have earned good reviews from top book publications and a loyal following.

But he said for his latest book he was ready for something different.

"Crime fiction is getting shorter, peppier, more tense," he said. "This is a story where I want people to stretch out."

The story opens in Depression-era Seattle, with poverty and labor struggles as the backdrop. The plot stars former logger Slippery Wilson, who finds himself in a chase up the Inside Passage, caught in the middle of a battle among "reds," a private security company, police and a woman he doesn't trust but can't escape.

The book is full of the hard-luck and low-life characters who peopled the Cecil Younger mysteries, and is rich with descriptions of the Alaskan landscape. The book also has the same dark sense of humor of the Cecil genre.

"This is a different voice," Straley said. "It's written in the third person. It's not Cecil telling the story. When I wrote the Cecil books, I can put on a costume and tell the story."

For "The Big Both Ways," Straley was inspired by Depression-era Alaska history, and the real-life story of Robert DeArmond, a prolific Alaska writer who as a young man rowed an open boat from Sitka to Seattle. DeArmond recounted the journey in his book "Voyage in a Dory."

Although he dispensed with the private investigator, an occupation he holds in real life, Straley paralleled some of Slippery's personality with his own.

"I do think of myself as someone reacting to things around him," Straley said. "(Slippery) is not a hero."

He modeled his favorite character in the book, the young girl Annabelle, on his neice, Rebecca Mostow, who like Annabelle is passionate about animals. (As a 10-year-old, Mostow owned a snake, but Straley substituted a cockatiel for practical purposes for the rowboat trip.)

Straley said he took a long time to write this book because he struggled to get the feel of the era right, and wanted the story to be compelling despite the slow-paced rowboat journey in the book.

"It was originally much longer," he said. "I kept honing it down to keep the action coming." He interjected new plot lines and characters into the boat-journey -and-murder adventure story, then weeded other parts out.

"I relied on people to help me focus and shape things," he said.

When he finished this book he sent it to the New York publishing houses, but they turned it down.

"They wanted something different," Straley said. "One of the comments was that it seems kind of old-fashioned. I take it as a compliment. I like old-fashioned stories. ... It's an adventure story, a story you'd tell around the fire."

Straley's pal Ray Troll, the Ketchikan artist renowned for his fanciful T-shirt and coffee package designs, suggested he try Alaska Northwest Books, a Portland, Oregon-based publisher specializing in Alaska subjects of all kinds, except fiction.

There he found an editor, Sarah Juday, who went to bat for "The Big Both Ways," persuading her bosses to pick it up as the first work of fiction that Alaska Northwest has ever published.

"That was a great thing," Straley said. "She's my first and most important supporter. ... If people say they enjoy it and want to publish it, there's no better feeling."

During the past year and a half that Straley has been Alaska's writer laureate, he has been using his small stipend to travel around the state teaching workshops, speaking in schools and encouraging people to tell their stories. His term in the honorary position runs through December.

Straley said he is also looking forward to the publication of his book of poetry this August by University of Alaska Press.

He has been chosen as this spring's commencement speaker at the University of Alaska Fairbanks graduation ceremony, where he will receive an honorary doctorate degree.

Hugh Straley, an oncologist and medical director of Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, expressed enthusiasm for having another doctor in the family.

But as proud as Hugh Straley is of his brother, it was enough that John was born a boy.

"I desperately wanted a brother," Hugh said. "I had three sisters that tormented me, and they still do. John was just what I was hoping for."