Pam Houston is the breakaway darling of Park City’s Writers at Work, the author picked out of the conference by editor Carol Houck Smith in the late eighties, who became known in her fiction for her fierce outdoorswomanship and a modern girl’s sexual enlightenment.
All these many years after “Cowboys are My Weakness,” Houston has written “Contents May Have Shifted” which I read through in two nights, the same way I devoured her first books. Her lead character, named Pam, seems as familiar as the characters in her previous works, although a little older and a little more involved with chakras and other hippy guru goings on.
Still chasing elusive love, still rushing rivers and mountains, in now-worldwide adventures from Alaska to Bhuton. Comforting to know the fictional Pam is as headstrong, as brave, as foolish as ever.
Left me wondering if – as much as I’ve changed as I’ve aged – I haven’t changed at all. And if so, is that good or bad?
What do we let go of as we grow, and what stays locked in the life palette for continually revisiting, the same hue spinning out perpetually?