Pam Houston – Deep Creek
Casey’s | 101 Central Avenue, Whitefish, Montana
Friday, Jan. 17, 2020 • 6:00 PM – 9 PM
Whitefish Review Hosts Author Pam Houston January 17
Live music, reading, discussions, and book signing
WHITEFISH, MONT. — Author Pam Houston will read from her latest book Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country (W.W. Norton & Company, 2019) on Friday, January 17 at Casey’s in downtown Whitefish.
On her 120-acre homestead high in the Colorado Rockies, writer Pam Houston learns what it means to care for a piece of land and the creatures on it. Elk calves and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below, and lightning sparks a 110,000-acre wildfire, threatening her century-old barn and all its inhabitants.
Through her travels from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska, she explores what ties her to the earth, the ranch most of all. Alongside her devoted Irish wolfhounds and a spirited troupe of horses, donkeys, and Icelandic sheep, the ranch becomes Houston’s sanctuary, a place where she discovers how the natural world has mothered and healed her after a childhood of horrific parental abuse and neglect.
Deep Creek delivers Houston’s most profound meditations yet on how “to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief… to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive.”
Prior to Deep Creek, Houston is the author of Cowboys Are My Weakness, Waltzing the Cat, the novel, Contents May Have Shifted, Sight Hound, and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me. Her stories have been selected for volumes of Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Doors open at 6 pm with live music by Pete Redshaw. Readings and a discussion with Review founding editor Brian Schott happen from 7-8 pm, with book signings from 8-9 pm. A $10 entry donation is suggested to help support the non-profit journal. Both hardcover and paperback copies of Deep Creek will be available for purchase, as well as Whitefish Review’s “Lucky” issue #13, guest-edited by Houston in 2013.
Whitefish Review is a non-profit journal publishing the literature, art, and photography of mountain culture and beyond. As a recognized non-profit corporation created for the public good, it is supported by generous donations, grants, and subscriptions. The literary evening is sponsored in part by The Whitefish Community Foundation. For more information, visit www.whitefishreview.org. For more information on Pam, visit www.pamhouston.net.
Praise for
Deep Creek
Finding Hope in the High Country
By Pam Houston
“Pam Houston is the rodeo queen of American letters. In Deep Creek, her voice has never been more fully realized, and her message never more important.” —Samantha Dunn, author of Not By Accident
“In the face of the world’s turmoil, this book is utter clarity. In the face of the world’s harshness, this book is a soft place to land. If you find yourself careening toward despair, pick up Deep Creek and read even just one page. The words there will lift you back to hope—not the sentimental kind, but the kind that can and does change the world for the better. What gratitude we owe to Pam Houston for writing it.” —B.K. Loren, author of Animal, Mineral, Radical
“Houston has a great range of vision, and she’s fun to read. She gets the land right. Through water wars and love-worn days, she conveys life on a remote Colorado ranch, bringing to the place the maelstrom of her own history. This is a perfectly American memoir. A restless heart finds its place.” —Craig Childs, author of Atlas of a Lost World
“Deep Creek is a love letter to earth, animals, and the best of humanity. Pam Houston has taken our heartache and woven it back into hope. Her stories of love, loss, and a life lived in relationship to land give us good reasons not to give up on ourselves or each other. This is the book we need right now to remind us how to endure—passionately. An unstoppable heart song.” —Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Misfit’s Manifesto
“There is so much beauty, wisdom, and truth in this book, I felt the pages almost humming in my hands. I was riveted and enlightened, inspired and consoled. This is a book for all of us, right now.” —Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild
“Full of wisdom, wit, and loving attention, Pam Houston’s survey of her life and land should be required reading for anyone who loves this planet we call home.” —Camille T. Dungy, author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers
“This book is endlessly wise, funny, and full of heart. To say that its clear-eyed, doom-laden—yet loving—message is important and timely would be an understatement. It is unapologetically sincere, utterly moving.” —Tommy Orange, author of There, There