Author Timothy Egan advocates for new MV Library

During his celebrated career as an award-winning newspaper columnist and author, Timothy Egan has traveled the globe in search of the stories that connect him to his readers.

For a much longer time – dating to childhood – he has made shorter treks to public libraries and rural bookmobile stops to discover stories that would shape and define Egan as one of the nation's most powerful voices on behalf of literacy.

The University of Washington alum, a former op-ed writer for the New York Times and author of 10 books, brought his support of libraries to Mount Vernon on Saturday.

Egan keynoted a 90-minute program at the historic Lincoln Theatre, of which the Weekly News was a primary sponsor, honoring libraries in general and construction of the $53 million multi-use Mount Vernon Library Commons Project specifically.

"This project," Egan said of the spacious and eco-friendly new Mount Vernon library, due to open in late June, "is a special place on the planet. It's the product of dreamers. The new library will be a keeper of your culture."

Egan, a Seattle native with Irish Catholic roots who grew up in the Spokane area, reveres libraries. He calls them "churches of books."

"We've seen an unprecedented number of book bans in recent years," Egan said. "But not reading books is worse than banning books. If you're not offending someone, you don't have enough books on your shelves."

Egan, 69, expressed gratitude for the bookmobile program that ventured out to his remote boyhood home.

"Because of the bookmobile," he said, "Indian Trail Road could go from black-and-white to Technicolor."

Egan sprinkled humor throughout a presentation that addressed the serious themes of his books – environmental protection, racial strife, religion and economics, among them.

He joked about having spent seven years at the UW. "And that was as an undergraduate."

The time on campus, especially at Suzzalo Library, was well spent.

"I did some of my best thinking there," Egan said.

Suzzalo and the many other libraries Egan has visited have allowed him to pursue fortunate strokes of serendipity.

"You have to trust serendipity," he said. "In a library, you'll never know who or what you'll bump into. They allow you to open your mind to something you never imagined."

Egan has long practiced what he preaches. As a national correspondent with the New York Times, often writing under tight deadlines, Egan would often consult a favorite book, Norman McLean's "A River Runs Through It," to push him through an assignment.

"Reading a perfect paragraph would get me unstuck and I'd be able to write an 800- to 1,000-word story on deadline," he said.

Egan lauded the lasting power of books in an ever more technology-oriented society.

"Books," he said, "have survived technology for centuries."

Egan cited libraries as a key guardrail against misinformation, which he said is an immense threat in a social media environment often marked by rapid and non-vetted communication.

As a Times correspondent, Egan shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 with a team of reporters that produced the series "How Race is Lived in America." As an author, he has won acclaim for several of his books, including "Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher," an account of photographer Edward Curtis, and "The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America."

Egan's topics are often edgy. He exposed the Jim Crow north in "A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America and the Woman Who Stopped Them."

"We shouldn't be afraid of our history," said Egan, who contended that studying the nation's more difficult chapters can help readers learn from those misadventures and avoid repeating them.

There were several La Conner connections related to Egan's appearance. He was introduced by Mount Vernon Library Foundation President Suzanne Butler, a former La Conner bookstore owner. In his remarks, Egan praised iconic La Conner novelist Tom Robbins.

He also extended kudos to residents of Skagit County, where Butler pointed out that three new libraries have been built in the past three years, including the La Conner Swinomish Library.

"The Library Commons Project shows that books aren't dead, stories aren't dead, and history isn't dead. May your grandchildren grow old, cherishing this new-born in your community," Egan said.