Former Portland resident and longtime author Therese DesCamp will read from her newly published book, Hands Like Roots: Notes on an Entangled Contemplative Path (Santos Books, 2025) on Sunday, September 14, at 2:30 p.m. DesCamp’s essays explore life as a contemplative firmly planted in and entwined with community. She weaves seemingly disparate topics—hydrology, cognitive linguistics, political chaos, the nature of causality, climate instability and embodiment—with the inner world of meditation and prayer, to offer an intelligent, accessible, sometimes hilarious, and always heart-opening whole. Early reviewers have called Hands Like Roots “foundational and funny, poetic and practical,” “an extraordinary work of hope in a moment that often feels completely bereft of hope,” and “essential spiritual nourishment for weary hearts.”

Sponsored by First Unitarian Beacon Bookstore, the reading will take place in the Buchan Reception Hall at First Unitarian Church in Portland from 2:30-4:00 p.m. on September 14th. Free parking is available in the church lot on 12th between Salmon and Main; entrance to the Buchan Reception Hall is on Salmon Street, between 12th and 13th.

Therese DesCamp claimed Portland as her hometown as a young adult. She spent a dozen years working as an advocate for differently-abled persons before moving to Berkeley for graduate school. Following completion of an MDiv and PhD—and a peripatetic life following jobs in California—DesCamp settled in the Kootenay Mountains of rural British Columbia, where she founded a retreat centre with her husband, George Meier. Therese was long-listed for the 2023 CBC nonfiction award, and her writing has appeared in professional journals, books, popular magazines, newspapers and online.