Early on in their travels, Chelan David climbed the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art with daughters Neah (left) and Kylie (right).

This article first appeared on KCUR.org and aired on May 31, 2024. Listen to the interview here.

The author's kidnapping is a natural place to begin a conversation about Beautiful States of Mind: A Father and Daughters’ Pilgrimage to all 50 States.

In fact, this is where Chelan David begins his book, though most of the story is about traveling with his two daughters after his divorce from their mother. The three visit national parks, monuments of all types and professional sporting events, bonding in a way many parents would envy.

But the author’s early-1970s kidnapping looms large in the pages and stands in dark contrast to the contemporary journey he takes with his own children.

For nearly three years, David’s father, determined to be the custodial parent, shuttled David and his sister across India, Europe and Canada, “on the run with no real resources,” David says. “So, we'd kind of sleep at train stations, on the bus overnight, you know, rely on the kindness of strangers.”

David’s mother is from tiny Bison, in west-central Kansas. His father, a Cornell University-educated engineer and 20 years older than his mother, was from India’s southernmost state of Tamil Nadu. The two never legally married, but their split was no less contentious for it.

All the same, his mother was taken off guard to receive a call from India that her 2- and 6-year-old children were no longer in the United States.

She tracked them for years. She enlisted the services of a Legal Aid team. She contacted U.S. Sen. Bob Dole. No one could find them. Not even Scotland Yard.

In the end, a library in England helped. David’s mother began tracing her ex-partner’s calls and finally identified their neighborhood of origin.

“She knew that my dad would be going to the library because he loved reading and wanted to always be reading books. So, she was able to track down the libraries near that address and get the address from the library card,” David says.

While David’s internal GPS seemed to be set by this early experience, it’s not the primary story he wishes to tell in his memoir.

Once David and his sister were reunited with their mother, they rarely saw their father again, staying in contact mostly through letters. He wanted much better for his relationship with his daughters.

“I didn't want my kids not to know me very well,” he says.

After moving back to Kansas from Seattle, where he lived for a time before his own divorce, David longed to travel as he and his ex-wife once had — and he wanted to take his girls.

“In a sense I was following in my father’s footsteps,” he writes. “However, I was determined to strike a balance between the freedom and reckless genius of my father with the responsibility and constancy of my mother.”

At first, he and his daughters, Neah and Kylie, started off with short trips not far from their Overland Park home. Atchison, Topeka and St. Louis all had sites he wanted to show them.

Chelan David in Alaska with his daughters Kylie (left), Neah (right) and David's fiance Isabel Salgado (far right).

Then, with his ex-wife’s blessing — “She was actually really supportive,” he says — he took the girls to Bentonville, Arkansas, and to visit his sister in New York City.

“The trip to New York,” he writes, “was also the first step to fulfilling a pledge I had made when we left Seattle. I wanted to visit all 50 states with my daughters before they graduated from high school.”

And he did. Mostly by car.

“When you're on the road for that long, even teenagers get bored with their phones and electronic devices, and sometimes you’re out of coverage areas,” David says, “so you do have time to really have some deeper conversations.”

For instance, they visited the site of George Floyd’s murder just months after it happened. David’s daughters wanted to talk about their own family’s experience with racism, which was not a usual topic in their household.

“I think all people of color have experienced some form of racism at some point, so I told them about my experiences,” he says. He wasn’t Black or white, so many of his observations had to do with how he was treated when he was with groups of friends who were either majority Black or majority white.

Chelan David with his daughters at the Grand Canyon.

Neah and Kylie shared with him that while they didn’t see a lot of overt racism in their high school, they did notice some omissions in their curricula.

“They didn't learn about Black Wall Street, they never really learned about how, for instance, Native American children were taken away from their families and forced to go to American schools,” he says.

Each destination they reached offered built-in talking points like these — so much so that the book could easily function as a guide for other families.

On spring break 2019, they visited Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina and, day by day, he details what they saw and discussed, including Civil War memorials where they continued to discuss racism and slavery and the World of Coca-Cola where he explained the 1985 New Coke release and its marketing problems.

Chelan David in Atlanta with his daughters Neah (in the yellow ring) and Kylie (in the green ring).

In fact, David says, he originally planned the book as a guide but recognized early in the process that he wanted to include personal details about his family and reflections about healing after divorce.

The book covers forgiveness and compassion and making peace with even major things that happen in childhood — like international kidnapping — and doing his best to give his daughters the memories that’ll give them joy later.

“We have accumulated a trove of memories and a foundation of values that they can draw upon when needed,” he writes, “even when we become separated by the natural cycle of life.”

Chelan David discusses Beautiful States of Mind: A Father and Daughters’ Pilgrimage to all 50 States, 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 4 at the Kansas City Public Library’s Plaza Branch, 4801 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64112. RSVP here.

This story was produced in partnership with the KCUR 89.3.