Idaho writer gives memoir presentation

An Idaho writer is coming to Kalispell next week to discuss his novel about growing up in rural North Dakota.

J. David Erickson will be the guest speaker at the July 18 Authors of the Flathead meeting and will sign copies of his book July 19 at Sportsman & Ski Haus in Kalispell.

Erickson describes his book, “The Muddy River Boys,” as part memoir, part storytelling.

“You will find the book difficult to characterize in traditional genre, fiction, nonfiction, etc.,” he said in an email to the Inter Lake.

“I prefer the term ‘boy story,’ wherein the characters like me sometimes exaggerate incidents in the immediate aftermath (when we were 5 to 10 years of age). Then, 65 years later, I relied on memory and recollections of other characters from those wild boyhood times.

“In a nutshell, this book is whimsical, fun reading with challenging  underlying messages regarding youth cultures then versus contemporary.”

Erickson took up writing after retiring from his career as a fisheries biologist. His writing in that position consisted primarily of scientific reports.

“This is more entertainment for me,” he said. “It’s enjoyable.”

He started writing short stories about his boyhood in North Dakota.

“It was a place of great freedom for young people in the late ’40s and ’50s,” he said. “The stories needed recording.”

Eventually, he concluded those short stories should be connected in a book. The book also includes drawings, some by Erickson as a youth and some by his grandchildren. Erickson says his grandkids provided another motivation for writing “The Muddy River Boys.”

“I wanted to describe the youth of the last century to my grandchildren so they could understand it,” he said. “There was a vast difference in how children were raised. We were given freedom back then, for a number of reasons explained in the book.”

One example of that freedom tells the story of a pair of boys from Williston, N.D., who, after talking about running away from home, finally hopped a train to Whitefish. They rode the entire way in a box car and arrived in Montana snow blind.

“They were rescued from the train in Whitefish, and when they came home, they were kind of heroes for the adventure,” Erickson said, chuckling.

The book shares other such stories, he said, about “the crazy things that kids will do if we give them a chance.”

Erickson will discuss his book and the art of memoir writing at Authors of the Flathead’s July 18 meeting, which starts at 7 p.m. in Ross Hall room 151 at Flathead Valley Community College. The public is welcome to attend.

Erickson will sign copies of his book from 4 to 7 p.m. July 19 at Sportsman & Ski Haus. He says he expects some of the original Muddy River Boys to be in attendance.

Erickson said his second book, a piece on trout fishing, is in the works. When it’s finished, he hopes to return to the Flathead for more book signings.