The question would come at Duane "Dog" Chapman with each new capture, usually as the bounty hunter stood in line outside a jail with a bail jumper he had just tracked down: How did you do it?

"I would tell the story and people would say, 'You should write a book, that's a great story'," Chapman recalled.

Now he has. The most famous face in bounty hunting has become a published author. With the help of Laura Morton, the Dog has written his memoirs, "You Can Run But You Can't Hide" (Hyperion, $25.95).

The 321-page book goes on sale in Hawai'i bookstores today, a week earlier than its Mainland release.

Chapman, the Hawai'i-based, 54-year-old star of his own reality show on A&E, calls the book his inside story — from his religious roots to gang life to prison for murder to bounty hunting. There's even a Dog you may not recognize, the one who was Kirby vacuum company's salesman of the year.

He is a man with a message: It's not the mistakes that define people. It's the way they rebound that inks their legacy.

"A writer I am not," he said. "But I can tell a good story."

Chapman first started thinking about a book in the late 1970s, while serving time in a Huntsville, Texas, prison for first-degree murder. It was there he also decided to become a bounty hunter.

Using only his belt, he caught his first bail jumper two weeks after his release from prison in 1979. It wasn't long before Chapman's mother convinced him to share the stories so she could write them down.

Turning his stories into a book took about a year.

"I think this book flows, and the chapters are not really long," Chapman said. "It's a fast-paced world now. I wanted chapters to be short, exciting and true."

Chapman thinks of the book as motivational. Whether or not you are a fan of his show, which draws 4.5 million viewers, he is certainly living a rags-to-riches story.

This is a guy who winced every time he filled out a job application after he got out of prison, truthfully noting his conviction.

Now he's a celebrity with a widely recognized mullet. He's an over-the-top character, but he built his reputation on the muscle of hard work. His show, in its fourth season, caps off a career in which he captured more than 6,000 crooks.

All this is the essence of why Chapman calls himself "the poster child for rehabilitation."

"I want people to hear my dream and listen to what happened," he said. "There are a lot of people with worse problems than I got and after reading the book they will see that if Dog can do it, they can do it."

Chapman recently returned from a bounty-hunting expedition to the Mainland. He captured 14 people in 16 days, but that wasn't the high point.

It was his return to the prison in Huntsville, Texas. Chapman went to see the warden.

"I was proud of myself," he said. "I had changed my life. I felt I could shake his hand with pride instead of being ashamed."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.