Luke Eckley

Luke Eckley’s propensity to seek adventure began at an early age. As the middle of three boys, he and
his brothers grew up routinely exploring the unknown and testing the limits of physics. While
sometimes paying for their curiosity with pain (and stitches), their adventurous spirits grew as they did.

At the age of seven, his parents decided to take a family adventure of epic proportions. Dad, a teacher,
took a 1-year sabbatical, and their family of five left Pittsburgh and moved onto a sailboat with his
grandfather. For twelve months, they sailed around the South Pacific islands, including Samoa, Tonga,
and Fiji, becoming immersed in the culture and topography on the other side of the world.

On that sailboat, during long days at sea, an interest in reading was fostered, and Luke’s love of books
began. Growing up, he would pick up the likes of Tolkien, Crichton, and King, spending hours upon
hours absorbing the stories those great authors most masterfully told. Not surprisingly, tales of
adventure were his favorite.

The possibility of someday authoring a story of his own was not considered until his college days. During his freshman year at the Indiana University of  Pennsylvania, Luke took a college writing course and absolutely loved it. The seed was planted during that spring semester in 1991, but writing would take a back seat to life for two and half decades.

Equipped with an undergraduate degree in Safety Science, and an MBA, Luke went into the workforce,
got married, and had three children. Raising a family and having all new adventures with his wife, two
sons, and daughter became Luke’s primary focus for the next twenty years. The desire to write,
however, was always there. It was not until 2014, on a fly-fishing excursion, that the idea for a book was kindled, and Luke’s urge to write it could not be quelled. Over the course of the next six years, pen was finally put to paper, and he wrote his first piece of fiction since college. That story would become his
debut novel, God’s Country.