Author Brown also wrote about Ellijay moonshiner
Through the years, Jan Brown has hiked up to the enigmatic rock wall in Fort Mountain State Park “more times than I can count” to try and visualize how it got there. His latest book release, The Legend of Fort Mountain, delves into the mystery.
“You walk around and you see the cliffs and the wall, so I started looking into all the legends about how it was formed because I’m a history nut,” said Brown, a retired investigator with U.S. Customs and the Department of Homeland Security. “There were so many different legends — you’ve got the Welsh explorer Madoc, the moon-eyed people and others. It just started forming in my mind that I could write something and incorporate all of them together.”
The impressive 855-foot long pile of stones — some weighing several tons and whose north end lines up with the summer solstice — has been in existence for more than a thousand years. A trail plaque offers several theories about who built the wall, and it got Brown’s mind turning. He decided to write a fictional account of what may have happened and then spent many hours in research.
“To me, the research is the best part — I love the research, going into the history part,” said Brown, who lives in Chatsworth. “The first thing I did was research on the internet the Cherokee names for people, and Welsh explorers’ names for people, then the ancient customs (of each group). The names I used in the book were actual Cherokee and Welsh names. Most of it was internet research, looking at Madoc and how the Cherokee viewed life, researching the Druids and how they fared over history, those kinds of things.
“I think it makes the reader wonder about what really happened.”
The novelist, who has written seven other history-oriented books, was asked to expand on his research techniques.
“It used to be years ago you didn’t have all that (available material),” Brown noted. “Now there’s so much research at your fingertips on the internet it’s easy to dig up more. I used to go to the library and sit forever to research this stuff.”
He affirmed all his books have a “historical context in one way or another.”
“For instance, The Winds on Darby Island involves a moonshiner from Ellijay,” Brown began. “He was drafted into the Marine Corps for World War II and ends up at a seaplane base — which was actually in the Bahamas during the war — as security. And there is a Darby Island in the Bahamas. It has a mansion on it that’s been deserted since World War II. Rumors were the Germans actually used it to facilitate U-boat (submarine) missions in the Atlantic. When the war ended, they just vacated the mansion.
“So I put all that in the story, and one of my favorite movies is Casablanca. So I took Rick (Humphrey Bogart) from Casablanca, gave him a new identity because he escaped the Germans, and put him in the novel — along with the Marine guy. I just try to twist it around the best I can to make something that’s readable.”
Getting started
Brown was asked when he was bitten by the writing bug.
“I was doing a little writing in high school, just tinkering,” said the North Whitfield Class of 1970 grad. “When I was a cop in Athens, I actually wrote my first novel, but never got a chance to put enough in it because I was working full time. Eventually, I finished the book and sent it in to a few (publishing houses) and they rejected it. I understand why now, when I read the old script! I put it on the shelf and forgot about it.”
The book he eventually polished up, Miller’s Legacy, is about a German U-boat that was sunk off the coast of Georgia in World War II.
“When the war ended, there were people trying to escape Germany, and there was treasure on the submarine,” he revealed. “After they sank it off the coast, that’s when you run into the Gullah (former slave) culture, which is part of the coastal life there, so I incorporated that into it. The captain from the U-boat escaped and worked his way inland and became a recluse in a small south Georgia town. Thirty years later, he’s murdered, and the police chief starts looking into it. Then he realizes this guy has no history, it’s a fake identity. It evolves into finding the submarine, Gullah culture and bad guys from Charleston (S.C.) coming to get the treasure.”
After retiring and moving to Ooltewah, Tenn., Brown latched onto the Chattanooga area’s rich Civil War history.
“I had an idea for another novel, then I wrote The Ridge at Misty Meadow, a family saga that started in the Civil War with the main characters meeting, becoming friends and going through the Mexican-American War out in Texas,” he detailed. “It develops that they end up back in the Ringgold area where they grew up. It actually starts in the 1920s with the daughter learning about her father’s episodes, and includes some shady contractors who were trying to develop the Dixie Highway (Highway 41) and take their property.”
Brown said one of his readers has already asked if he’ll do a second book about Fort Mountain. He started his career as a “street cop” in Calhoun, then ended up in Athens as a detective after law enforcement stints in Walker County (LaFayette) and Cordele. Later, he got on with the U.S. Customs Bureau as an investigator working in Columbia, S.C., Jacksonville, Fla., and down into the Florida Keys. After Homeland Security “sorta took over” the agency, he became an ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) agent and went to Washington, D.C. He retired while working from the U.S. Embassy in Canada.
Brown said his books are available on Amazon by typing “Jan W. Brown” in its search engine. One book in the middle of the list, Mortar Matters (about women in the Bible), is by another author with the same name, he pointed out.
Brown to speak in Ellijay
Regional author Jan Brown will be in Ellijay on Thursday, April 20, at noon in the Double L Restaurant to address the local Kiwanis Club. He will also have copies of his books for sale. The public is welcome to attend; lunch is dutch treat. For more information, call Mark at 706-217-5565.