Join us as we celebrate the release of Kim Cooper Findling's Chance of Sun: An Oregon Memoir.July 25, 2011 -- 6:30 p.m.
CHANCE OF SUN unfolds the story of an Oregon girl coming of age in the 1970s and 80s, navigating her way through pick-up trucks, dive bars, higher education and backwoods trails before finding a place she belongs. In 23 essays set over 20 years, Findling presents a fresh and distinct literary voice.
Beginning with her childhood in Coos County, Findling relates a rural unbringing spent walking beaches and hiking in the woods with her forester father, attending summer camp just over the hill from the Oregon Country Fair, road-tripping to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with schoolmates, and learning about the fickleness of love in campgrounds, beer joints and on the University of Oregon campus. Yet, following a move to Oregon’s biggest city after college, Findling lost her way and her connection to Oregon’s landscape, becoming caught up in the drugs and booze that flowed so freely in Portland’s restaurant scene. But it was Oregon that helped Findling find herself again later, this time on the east side of the mountains, where she found clarity in High Desert trails and a wide-open sky, as well as life’s most grounding phenomenon—love.
