Pearl Stark interviews Pam Houston

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Pearl Stark is a great interviewer! I enjoyed her interview with Pam Houston. Click the link to hear the interview.

http://www.kpov.org/images/stories/audio/pam_houston_kpov.mp3

Or go to WWW.KPOV.ORG for more of Pearl’s interviews.

Pam Houston is one of my favorite authors; her writing has such clarity and passion. Although she has traveled widely and written about her wanderings, she has a pitch perfect western voice inspired and sent soaring by the vast untamable landscapes that feeds her soul. Tall white mountains, fast rushing rivers, and meadows erupting in wildflowers come to life so strongly in her books that you feel like you are walking those trails too, stepping right into the story. It is a rare gift to write so vividly that the reader is transported into another place, Pam has the gift.

Her latest book Contents May Have Shifted is told in a series of vignettes that take the reader careening around the globe; hiking in the high country, rafting rivers, dealing with faithless love, finding strength in the loyal bonds of friends, and discovering happiness too. The shifting stories range in setting from Bhutan to Bend Oregon. The vignettes are the linked stories of a woman’s life.. They give brief glimpses into the cares and pleasures of a woman facing the sorts of challenges that pepper her lifetime. She struggles with a love that cannot be true, discovers a love that might be true but has complications, hops planes to fantastic destinations, walks on the wild side, and shares with the reader her adventurous nature and wry sense of humor. She has a cadre of friends, funny and wise, who give an outstanding example of the value of friendship. The format is daring, vignettes of a life, but ultimately a lot of fun to read. It works; the reader is carried through the story gleefully by the narrator. All the short episodes add up to an interesting life, one the reader is happy to have experienced vicariously.

Houston’s works include Cowboys are My Weakness, Waltzing The Cat, A Little Bit More About Me, and Sight Hound. I recommend them all, but if you have a reverence for the human animal bond read Sight Hound, inspired by Pam’s Irish Wolfhound, Dante. Narrated by several characters, including Dante, it is the poignant but uplifting story of a dog who lived big. Dante believes his task in life is to teach his human to love. He says “There are Three Principals to remember if you are to teach a human being anything and they are consistency, consistency, and consistency. They are such fragile creatures to begin with, with poor eyes, poorer hearing, and no sense of smell left to speak of, its no wonder they are made of fear.” Dr. Evens, the vet who battles Dante’s osteosarcoma, is modeled on Dr. Walsh of UC Davis. While the character is fictional, the instances of him sleeping in the kennels with his patients are true. Sight Hound is a celebration of the bond between a dog and a woman; a moving and often funny celebration of a life well lived.