BY KAREN BOSSICK

Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, returns to Ketchum on Wednesday to discuss his memoir.

Alexie, whose father was a citizen of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, will speak at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29, at Ketchum’s Community Library.

His memoir, “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” tells the complicated story of his relationship with  his mother Lillian, who created familial havoc with her drinking but walked away from her addiction when it was on the brink of costing her everything.

Lillian herself survived a violent past, which she hid. She selflessly cared for strangers but couldn’t always give her children the affection they craved. She did, however, help provide for them by sewing quilts and working as a clerk at the Wellpinit Trading Post on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington.

Upon her death at age 78, Alexie responded to the haunting ghosts of the past the only way he knew how: by writing a memoir that was comprised of 78 poems and 78 essays that give insight into life on a reservation. The memoir, which has been called “an unflinching and unforgettable remembrance,” is funny, profane, tender and angry.

To watch it in person, save a seat at https://thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/14922788. The program also will be livestreamed at https://vimeo.com/event/5473336, but it will not be recorded for future viewing.

Alexie has also written “Smoke Signals,” which was adapted as a film; “Reservation Blues,” which received a 1996 American book Award, and “War Dances,” which won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Iconoclast Books will have books for purchase and signing at the library.