Ottawa’s Hank Walsh tries new literary angle

Hank Walsh is not one to avoid a challenge and he has now taken on a big one in his growing literary career.

Walsh, a local entrepreneur, author, organizer and outdoorsman perhaps best known for putting together Hank’s 4x4 Jamboree, The American Sportsman Show and Hall of Fame and the La Salle County Motorsports Hall of Fame, is already the author of four non-fiction books on the subjects of history and the outdoors.

However, he’s now tried his hand at something a little different: a work of fiction called “On The Run” that is now available in local bookstores.

Walsh said he wrote the original draft of the story about three years ago, but then “got put on the back burner” when a workplace injury led to some health issues. He returned to it a year ago and was able to pick up right where he left off, some fine tuning and it was ready to go.

Not wanting to give away too much of the plot of the new effort, Walsh called it “a story of friends, love, hate, revenge and adventure.”

“This is my first work of fiction, so I’m pretty excited about it,” Walsh said. “I’ve been writing for a long time … but this was a whole different challenge. Fiction is a very different ballgame, but how exciting to have it unfold this way for me. I had the idea for quite a while, but it just took a little while to figure out how I was going to do it.

“You put your insides, your mind into something, like a painter does on a canvas, putting what’s inside out for all to see … I’m very happy with it and excited to see how it goes.”

The book can be purchased at The Prairie Fox Bookstore, 719 La Salle St., Ottawa; The True Leaves Bookstore in Princeton or by contacting Walsh at 779-213-4473.

Walsh, whose Jamboree was the largest in Illinois and one of the top 30 in the nation during its 1988 to 2012 run, in 1995 began The Backwoods Outdoor Show. Shortly thereafter, it was renamed The American Sportsman Show and added the Hall of Fame in 1999.

He also operates the La Salle County Motorsports Hall of Fame he founded in 2014 and has taken part in organizing more than 25 fundraisers for various worthy causes in the Illinois Valley.

Walsh’s writing career started with writing and publishing a sportsman’s newsletter between 2008 and 2016, then as a part-time writer for The Times newspaper in Ottawa for 10 years beginning in 2010.

The lifelong Ottawa resident and Marquette Academy alumnus first became an author with the printing of “The Reality of the Hennepin Canal” in 2014.

After having several articles printed in Heartland Outdoors and Pheasants Forever magazines in the following year, he moved on to writing “A History of Conservation in the Continental U.S.” in 2016.

His next effort, “U.S. Presidents and Conservation,” was written in 2021.

“I think people will find this very interesting,” Walsh said. “I know I’m excited about it. I hope they are, too.”