Egan, Timothy 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born November 8, 1954, in Seattle, WA; son of Harold and Joan Egan; married Joni Balter (a journalist), October, 1984; children: Sophie, Casey. Education: University of Washington, B.A., 1980.

ADDRESSES:

Home—4834 53rd Ave. S, Seattle, WA 98118. Office—New York Times—Seattle Bureau, P.O. Box 18375, Seattle, WA 98118. Agent—c/o New York Times News Bureau, 3515 W. Howe St., Seattle, WA 98119.

CAREER:

Journalist and writer. New York Times, New York, NY, correspondent based in Seattle, WA, and chief of Seattle bureau, 1987—. Essays have been featured on British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Radio.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Governor's Writing Award, Washington State, 1999, for Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West; honorary doctorate of humane letters, Whitman College, 2000; Pulitzer Prize, 2001, for coauthoring a series on race in America.

WRITINGS:

(Author of text) Seattle, photography by Charles Krebs, Graphic Arts Center (Portland, OR), 1986.

The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, Knopf (New York, NY), 1990.

Breaking Blue, Knopf (New York, NY), 1992.

Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West, Knopf (New York, NY), 1998.

The Winemaker's Daughter (novel), Knopf (New York, NY), 2004.

(Author of text) Wild Seattle: A Celebration of the Natural Areas in and around the City, Sierra Club Books (San Francisco, CA), 2004.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Timothy Egan, a New York Times correspondent based in Seattle, Washington, uses the Pacific Northwest as the basis for his nonfiction works of the early 1990s, The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest and Breaking Blue. To compile The Good Rain, Egan retraced the journey undertaken in 1853 by American writer Theodore Winthrop, who traveled through the Pacific Northwest and subsequently wrote a popular book about his explorations. Egan's expedition took him through such regions as Washington, Oregon, Vancouver, and Montana—areas he found hauntingly beautiful but increasingly threatened by environmental abuse. In The Good Rain he provides evidence that various timber companies, with the knowledge of the U.S. Forest Service, have routinely destroyed verdant woodlands, and that the Army Corps of Engineers has obliterated rivers and wildlife. Egan also points to an immense increase in population in the urban areas, which has resulted in both overcrowding and violence. "Gridlock and cocaine gang wars rule the valley in the city where I live," the author writes in The Good Rain. "Once it was full of small farmers and family merchants … with views straight up to the north spine of Mount Rainier. Now the farmers are all gone, and many Seattle merchants operate from behind bullet-proof windows." While many reviewers commented on Egan's dismay over the contamination of the Pacific Northwest, they also noted that he retains an appreciation for his native region. In addition, he makes an urgent plea for conservation. "With The Good Rain," wrote Richard Nelson in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, "Egan makes an important contribution to … the cause of protecting a land he loves."

Breaking Blue details the events surrounding a murder in 1935 Spokane, Washington. George Conniff, a local marshal, had been investigating a series of robberies and assaults—allegedly linked to some members of the Spokane police force—when he was killed. The murder was not solved until 1989, when sheriff Tony Bamonte inadvertently uncovered evidence that crucial information in the case had been deliberately withheld by some members of the police force. Bamonte found enough facts to identify and prosecute the offender. Egan's account of the investigation is "rich in history and suspense," noted Ben Harrison in the Library Journal. Charles Salzberg in the New York Times Book Review called Breaking Blue "lively" and "fascinating," adding that "Egan is an elegant, stylish writer who … has written a book far richer than the usual true-crime thriller."

In his debut novel, The Winemaker's Daughter, Egan tells the story of the Cartolano family, headed by Angelo, who establishes a winery in the Pacific Northwest following World War II. Years later, when Cartolano's son Niccolo, a firejumper, and some coworkers are killed fighting a forest fire, the Forest Service lays the blame on Niccolo's incompetence. Meanwhile, Cartolano's daughter, Brunella, learns of water theft to build an Indian Casino, which might have led to water being siphoned off from the fire pumps, a fact that could vindicate her brother. The Winemaker's Daughter is "a rollicking soap opera with as many twists as a corkscrew, written with an investigative reporter's eye for detail and nose for coincidence," wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Sven Birkerts, in a review on the New York Times Web site, commented: "The prose is often evocative."

Egan returned to nonfiction with The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. To write the book, Egan began collecting oral histories from survivors in 2002, traveling the back roads and visiting family farms. He profiles many of the survivors and their families and recounts those difficult times also written about by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. However, unlike Steinbeck, who wrote about those who fled to California and other places, Egan focuses on the farmers and families who hunkered down and weathered the drought. Kathleen Burke, writing in the Smithsonian, noted: "In his magisterial history of the region that came to be known as the Dust Bowl … Egan evokes a portrait of an all but forgotten land." In a Washington Monthly review, Andrew R. Graybill wrote: "Considering Egan's expertise as an environmental writer, it comes as no surprise that—in addition to his human cast—he highlights the natural world as a critical actor in the story." Graybill added: "In Egan's capable hands, swirling storms of topsoil become memorable characters—menacing, unpredictable, and relentless."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Egan, Timothy, The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, Knopf (New York, NY), 1990.

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2003, review of The Winemaker's Daughter, p. 1327; November 15, 2005, review of The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, p. 1219.

Library Journal, May 15, 1992, Ben Harrison, review of Breaking Blue, p. 104.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 15, 1990, Richard Nelson, review of The Good Rain, pp. 3, 8.

New York Times, December 17, 2005, David Laskin, review of The Worst Hard Time.

New York Times Book Review, June 7, 1992, Charles Salzberg, review of Breaking Blue, p. 18.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 15, 2004, John Marshall, "Timothy Egan Fulfills a Lifelong Dream with a Very Washingtonian Book," article on the author and his novel The Winemaker's Daughter.

Smithsonian, March, 2006, Kathleen Burk, review of The Worst Hard Time, p. 110.

Washington Monthly, April, 2006, Andrew R. Graybill, review of The Worst Hard Time, p. 49.

ONLINE

Knight New Media Center,http://www.wkconline.org/ (October 15, 2006), brief biography of the author.

New York Times Online,http://nytimes.com/ (February 11, 2004), Sven Birkerts, review of The Winemaker's Daughter; (December 25, 2005), Elizabeth Royte, review of The Worst Hard Time.