For 30 years Michael LaLumiere talked himself out of writing a book about Crater Lake. But at some level he knew he would have to do it.

Consider the last time he was at Oregon's only national park, about 15 years ago. He'd been there just a moment when he knew he had to leave. He found he didn't want his impressions of the park — still sharp in the way of memories etched when you're young — colliding with any new stuff to muddy them up.

Years ran by.

"When I turned 50, it was like, Mike, it's now or never," he says.

LaLumiere, 53, who now lives in Sun City, Ariz., is calling from the Phoenix airport, where he's beginning the book tour for "Why is Crater Lake so Blue," (Stagger Lee Books, hardcover $24.95) the novel he could no longer put off.

He plans book signings for 7 to 9 p.m. Friday at Waldenbooks in Medford, 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday at Barnes and Noble in Medford, and 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday, at Oregon Books in Grants Pass. The new book is also available at Amazon.com.

The book is a coming-of-age story about a young man who is a student at the University of Oregon in the mid-1970s and works summers at Crater Lake National Park, both of which also describe LaLumiere. He worked at newspapers in Seaside and Beaverton and at the Contra Costa Times in the San Francisco Bay Area.

When he retired to Arizona and began fixing up an old house with his wife, Gail, the couple started a company to publish children's books.

"Then I was convinced to do this novel I'd been threatening to do for 30 years," he says.

Sam, the central character, is a socially inept young man/fish out of water who spends the summer working on the park's buildings and utilities crew, the bottom of the food chain. He befriends a young woman, and there are political and moral crises, and Sam must make a decision.

How much of Mike is in Sam?

"I have to admit to a certain part of that," he says. "People tend to write from the stuff that's happened to them."

LaLumiere says he's tried to write the park as it truly was, at least through the prism of memory. And indeed, with its incomparable lake and its forest and its weather, it is almost as much a character as the people.

"The experience of the park was so dramatic," LaLumiere says. "If you ask me to remember a day of work, I can't. But I can picture what the park was like at a certain time of day, a kind of tree, a trail, the June snow.

"It must be that when you're young it burns into your mind."

A key element in he story is a problem with the park's water system that causes flu-like symptoms called the Crater Lake Crud. LaLumiere says there was a similar problem in 1975, but the one here is mainly a plot device.

In the last half of the book, Sam's friend Sally has been wronged, and Sam must figure out what to do. The final conflict is between Sam and a villain, Frank. There are no clear-cut answers, but as Sam gets through the crisis, we sense that he has changed.

"The story is also about how Sam doesn't know anything," LaLumiere says. "He learns that the hard way. I wish I'd learned as much as Sam. It took me a lot longer."

After years as a reporter and editor, LaLumiere's prose style ran to the short and the sweet.

"Literary editors don't like that so much," he says, "but the subject matter held."

He says his next novel will probably be set on the Oregon Coast around Seaside or Cannon Beach.

Will he see Crater Lake while he's here?

"I'm criss-crossing Southern Oregon for 10 days," he says. "But there might be a little opening."

Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail bvarble@mailtribune.com.