‘A family affair’: local novelist follows daughter’s lead

With the publication of his first novel, Haines resident Tom McGuire is following in the footsteps of his daughter.

“Steller’s Orchid,” McGuire’s first published fiction, was released this month by Boreal Books, an Alaska-based imprint of independent California publisher Red Hen Books.

The novel takes place in 1924 and follows John Lars Nelson, a young botanist, who embarks on an expedition to the Shumagin Islands in the Aleutians in search of a fictional Alaska orchid. “Steller’s…