BY KAREN BOSSICK

Author Pam Houston will explore the history of abortion in the United States and how it interconnects with her own life when she discusses her new book “Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood and Freedom” at Ketchum’s Community Library.

Houston will tell how her personal and professional life was powered by access to abortion over the nearly 50-years that Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. She will be in conversation with the library’s executive director Jenny Emery Davidson at 5 p.m. (NOTE THE TIME) Monday, Oct. 28.

The presentation is in-person only. Register to save your seat at https://thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/12925845.

Houston will discuss the decades when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, and she will guide the audience through the shifting landscapes of politics, the law and self-determination in a country where access to medical care and the power of women to determine their own destiny are once again dependent on geography and circumstance.

Houston is the author of the short story collection “Cowboys Are My Weakness,” “Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics and Place” and the memoir “Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country.” The latter describes what it means to care for a piece of land at 9,000 feet elevation in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado near the headwaters of the Rio Grande where elk calves and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below and a 110,000-acre lightning-sparked fire threatens a century-old barn and its inhabitants.

While living on this 120-acre homestead, Houston teaches at the University of California-Davis and the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Her book was published by the nonprofit Salt Lake City-based Torrey House Press, which seeks out books that create conversations about issues that concern the American West, landscape, literature and the future of the planet.

WORTH OF A WOMEN

While at the library, check out the Pro-Voice Project’s “Worth of a Woman” traveling exhibit in the Library’s Lecture Hall. The exhibit examines the connections between women’s health and community health, the barriers that stand in the way of women accessing care and suggestions for how conditions might be improved.

The exhibit will be on display at The Argyros during this weekend’s “Defiance of Silence” presentation of monologues, dialogues and reenactments of Idahoans’ personal experiences with abortion. “Defiance of Silence” starts at 6:30 tonight—Saturday, Oct. 26—and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 27.

Go to https://www.theargyros.org/calendar/in-defiance-of-silence for more information.