Daniel James Brown to keynote humanities dinner Sept. 8

The true stories and real people Daniel James Brown encounters in his life often help point him in the direction of his next literary undertaking.

New York Times best-selling author Brown, of Seattle, will be the keynote speaker at the Idaho Humanities Council's 2023 Distinguished Humanities Lecture at 7 p.m. Sept. 8 at The Coeur d'Alene Resort, where he will speak of his experience writing his latest book, "Facing the Mountain," released in May 2022.

Brown said he met a gentleman named Tom Ikeda at an awards ceremony where Ikeda captured Brown's curiosity when he spoke of his documentation of oral histories of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II and whose lives were forever altered by those experiences.

"There's all these wonderful stories," Brown told The Press during a phone call Tuesday. "He’s made all these oral histories available for free online, so I was able to go through hundreds of them."

A narrative nonfiction author with a propensity for research and discovering important details in the stories he crafts, Brown was led to spend more than four years writing "Facing the Mountain," a true story of Japanese-American heroes and their families during the war.

"It narrows down to these four families that I wanted to explore," he said.

"Facing the Mountain" chronicles the journeys of these heroes, who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible. It also tells the stories of their immigrant parents, who were forced into concentration camps on U.S. soil.

Brown was brought up in the San Francisco Bay area, where he had many Japanese-American friends as a kid.

"I grew up with a lot of information about the internment camps and stories of what happened," Brown said. "Immersing myself, I gained a much deeper appreciation for what these guys went through and how they navigated, the dignity and resilience they shared.

"I thought I knew the story, but I didn’t really until I really dove into it and started writing about it,” he said.

Brown is also the author of "Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894" and "The Indifferent Stars Above," a harrowing saga of a young bride who was a Donner Party survivor.

"I had a great uncle who as a young boy, a 16-year-old, was involved in the rescue expedition," Brown said, explaining how he came upon the inspiration for "Indifferent Stars."

"My uncle had a diary that was kept during that expedition and I remember being amazed by it," he said.

Brown's 2013 book earned him New York Times honors and is expected to be released as a film later this year: "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics."

"They've all come about because of some kind of personal connection,” Brown said. "'The Boys in the Boat' was because my neighbor, her dad was one of the boys in the boat."

With all four of his books, particularly "Boys in the Boat," the more he dug around, the more doors kept opening, Brown said.

"Doors I hadn't expected,” he said. "For a while, every time I turned around I realized there was another part of the story that was fruitful — and interesting."

Whatever he writes, Brown does so with compassion and care. He said he won't take on a project if a family objects.

"One thing I'm aways trying to do, all these stories about people in one way or another have overcome difficult challenges, I'm always trying to do justice for them, to honor their stories by telling them as truthful and with as much detail as possible," Brown said.

He said the reception to his works has been almost universally heartfelt, warm and positive.

"With 'Facing the Mountain,' I was a little worried because I'm not Japanese American," Brown said, "but the family members of those four guys have been very encouraging."

Brown's visit to North Idaho will be the first since he was a kid.

“I honestly am really excited to come to Coeur d'Alene," he said.

He said he is honored to speak at the event.

"As the way things are developing in the country in a lot of ways, in politics, and also in the constantly changing technologies and things like AI, it’s really easy for a society to lose touch with its history and its literature and its arts," Brown said. "Those are the things that really give meaning to our lives, both as individuals and as societies. As we plunge ahead into the future, it’s going to be more important than ever to keep the humanities alive."

He said he sees this loss of connection with the humanities as a real crisis.

"I’m a big advocate for all aspects of the humanities," Brown said. "That’s one of the reasons I do what I do."

Standard tickets to the Coeur d'Alene Distinguished Humanities Lecture and dinner start at $75.

Info: idahohumanities.org