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TUKTOYAKTUK - Children's author Anita Daher said she is somewhat ashamed to admit she has never been to Tuktoyaktuk, but she didn't let that fact stop her from setting her new novel, Poachers in the Pingos, in the Delta community.

Daher launched the book on Oct. 14 in Winnipeg, Man.

Poachers in the Pingos by former Yellowknife resident Anita Daher is an action-packed story set in Tuktoyaktuk. The story follows the adventures of two Junior Canadian Rangers named Jaz and Colly. Anita's last book, Racing for Diamonds, was set around Great Slave Lake.

Poachers in the Pingos is the second in a series of young adult novels set in places around the Canadian North.

Her first book in the series Racing for Diamonds was set near Great Slave Lake.

Because Daher was unable to make a trip to Tuk, she instead used research and sources to help her get a sense of the landscape and community.

"The little details about soil and plant life and all the things you don't go into great detail about, they still help set and root the story," said Daher.

Although she hasn't travelled to Tuk, Daher spent much of her childhood travelling around the North.

Even though she now lives in Winnipeg, she said her heart is still in Yellowknife, the last Northern town she and her family lived in before moving south.

Daher spent some of her childhood in Baker Lake and she was told that the landscape there was comparable to Tuk.

That helped her get in the mindset needed to write her story.

Poachers in the Pingos is a story about Jaz and Colly, two kids who go to visit their uncle in Tuktoyaktuk for the summer.

Their uncle is a Canadian Ranger and he takes the kids out to one of the pingos. Before long they get involved in a tangled plot involving poachers.

Daher said she took some liberties with the setting such as inventing a new hotel, although she tried to use real landmarks as well.

"The key is you want to have enough there to root the reader but not so much that it will take them out of the story," said Daher.

Captain Conrad Schubert, deputy commanding officer at the First Canadian Rangers Patrol Group Headquarters, helped Daher with the research for both of her Canadian Junior Rangers books.

He began with phone and email correspondence and eventually showed Daher around the headquarters when she travelled to Yellowknife.

"She sat down with the staff to talk about what the Junior Canadian Rangers are and what they do," said Schubert.

He also was one of the first to read the final draft of Poachers in the Pingos. He said the book is an excellent read.

"It's got a good storyline, it's exciting and it has lots of local description that the people from Tuk will recognize," he said.

Schubert provided copies of Daher's last book to members of the Canadian Junior Rangers patrols around the territory and said he expects to do the same with this next book.

"For the kids who are in the Rangers it's great to see themselves in print and it affirms their importance and significance," he said.

Daher said she hasn't made arrangements to get copies of the book to kids in Tuktoyaktuk yet but she is hoping copies of the book find their way to the community.

She is already hard at work on the next book in the Junior Canadian Rangers series, which will be set in Whitehorse.