PORT ANGELES — Saturday evening at Oven Spoonful, novelist and wildlife biologist Patrick Loafman will sign copies of his new book, Somewhere Upriver, and play original music on his kora harp.
There’s no charge for this gathering from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the cafe at 110 E. First St.
Somewhere Upriver is the story of Douglas Mortimer, a graduate student pursuing a lifelong dream of becoming a great scientist. When he hires an eccentric old herpetologist as a research assistant, things get strange.
The book “is full of salamanders and frogs and the crazy herpetologists that chase after them,” Loafman noted. And all of this is set nearby: in the Queets rainforest, Forks, Port Townsend and the University of Washington.
Loafman’s own specialty, as a field biologist working in Olympic National Park, is herpetology, aka the study of amphibians and reptiles. A poet as well as a novelist, he gave a reading of Somewhere Upriver earlier this month at the North Coast Writers’ monthly program at Wine on the Waterfront in Port Angeles. He also played the kora, a 21-string African harp that uses a gourd as a resonator.
Copies of Somewhere Upriver will be available at Oven Spoonful and at local bookstores. For more details, email ploafman@tfon.com.