Author Talk with Robin Lynn Behl

Former physician assistant at Central Maine Heart and Vascular Institute in Lewiston, Robin Behl will read from her new book, Price Per Barrel: The Human Cost of Extraction, at Callahan Hall in the Lewiston Public Library on Thursday, February 17th at 5:30 PM. This free, public program will also include a book sale and signing.

In Price Per Barrel, part travelogue, part mental health journey, Behl gives recognition to the human stories that exist throughout the repeated cycle of boom and bust that has shaped our movement across North America for the last four hundred years. From the copper in our cell phones to the oil that powers our lives, and so much more in between, humans come together to dig, drill, and race for it. In every community impacted by the extractive industries, there are working people who make sacrifices to care for their neighbors. This book is broad in theme as a reflection of the breadth of work that first responders and healthcare workers (view this to know more about them) do for their communities. What emerges from Behl’s work is evidence that first responders refuse to abandon their posts even when their towns are changing around them. They rise above their job descriptions, often times putting aside their own PTSD until the boom is over. After spending years on the road, in Price Per Barrel, Behl tells the stories of the people she met on the front lines with the hope that perhaps we can more fully understand the price of extracting each barrel of oil or shovel of ore and be better equipped when the next boom stops in our town.

Robin Behl grew up in southeastern New Mexico, where she got her first taste of emergency response as a volunteer firefighter, just after she graduated from high school. With an early passion for helping people, she continued her service and training as a firefighter and EMT while in college. She then spent thirteen years in emergency services with a variety of agencies around the country, becoming a paramedic and dispatcher. She earned her master’s degree in medicine at the University of New England and worked as a physician assistant in cardiovascular medicine for seven years. Her love for remote northern climates and her insatiable wanderlust inspired Price Per Barrel: The Human Cost of Extraction, her first non-fiction book.

Behl left the practice of medicine and now works in documentary filmmaking, allowing her to tell stories in a whole new way. She is a musician, a dancer, and a choreographer who feels most at home when she’s on a stage. She currently is working on her next book which is a critical look at medicine in the United States and what drives providers like her out of the field and into work they find more rewarding.

Copies of the new book will be available for sale at the event and a book signing will follow. Registration is not required.

For more information, contact the LPL Adult & Teen Services desk at 207-513-3135 or LPLReference@lewistonmaine.gov.