David Maraniss on Detroit, 1963, and the time Berry Gordy Jr. nearly died in Canada

If things had gone a different way for Berry Gordy Jr., when he was in Windsor, Ont., years ago, the Motown Records founder might never have been a household name.

That's because he nearly drowned while swimming in the Detroit River while visiting the city as a youth.

Luckily, his little brother saved his life.

The tale of what could have been is mentioned in a new book by David Maraniss, a Detroit-born, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who heard the story straight from Gordy himself.

"He almost drowned there, so you're almost responsible for Motown never existing in the first place," Maraniss said, referring to Windsor, in a telephone interview with CBC News from Washington, D.C.

While this anecdote is the only one in the book with a nearly-lethal ending involving Windsor, Maraniss said many Detroiters told him stories involving their neighbours on the other side of the river.

"It's very much an international neighbour that Detroiters are conscious of at all times," said Maraniss.

Cars, music and civil rights

His new book, Once in a Great City, centres largely on the Detroit of 1963, a year that Maraniss said combined many intriguing elements for a story that he wanted to tell.

"One was music, and Motown didn't come around until 1959, so I wanted to capture Motown at an early period of its most vibrant expression," he said.

It was also a big year for the auto industry.

"The 1963 models sold more than any other in history before that," said Maraniss.

But there were labour and civil rights issues of interest in Detroit during that time period.

"It so happened that in 1963, they sort of converged with Martin Luther King [Jr.] coming to Detroit to give his 'I Have a Dream' speech there before he did it in Washington," said Maraniss.

"And Walter Reuther, the head of the United Auto Workers, [was] marching side-by-side with King and being very instrumental in the move for civil rights and social progress during that era."

The Eminem connection

Maraniss said he was inspired to write the book after seeing the well-known "Imported from Detroit" commercial that aired during the Super Bowl in 2011.

"It was the one where Eminem is driving through the streets and you see the Joe Louis fist and the Diego Rivera mural, and he goes into the Fox Theatre and there's a black gospel choir rising in song and he says, 'This is the Motor City, this is what we do,'" said Maraniss, who was born in the city and lived there for the first 6½ years of his life.

"It's just an ad selling cars, but it struck me at a very deeper level. I choked up watching it."

The ad got him thinking about the Detroit he knew as a boy and what it meant to America and the world at large.

"I wanted to write a book that in some way captured that," he said.

A better tomorrow?

The Detroit of the early and mid-1960s has some parallels to the Detroit of today.

Then, as now, there was an optimism about the city being able to build a better future.

"One hopes that the leaders of today learn the lessons of the past and that it's not false hope again," said Maraniss.

"It's in a much more difficult place even today than it was 50 years ago."

But Maraniss believes "an upward trend" is apparent, in which some new investment is occurring and there are people who want to move back to the city once again.

"I think in the last few years, Detroit has moved somewhat away from becoming the symbol of the city of ruins to a city of hope," he said.