Advertisement
Lake Oswego Public Library welcomes local author Rebecca N. Thompson, MD, for a conversation about her book, Held Together: A Shared Memoir of Motherhood, Medicine, and Imperfect Love (HarperCollins 2025).Held Together recounts Dr. Thompson's complicated path to parenthood as a young doctor many years ago, woven into the stories of her patients, friends, and medical colleagues. Their voices speak not just to the challenges of creating families, but to the many ways that families can grow and change and thrive and struggle as they navigate their relationships across generations. Ranging from devastating to triumphant, from tear-stained to too-awkward-not-to-laugh, from universal to nearly unimaginable, the intimate first-person narratives of Held Together capture the extraordinary moments hidden within ordinary lives and welcomes all kinds of families, born and built and chosen.
Dr. Thompson will be joined in conversation by Kelly Burke, a fellow Oregonian and her former patient. Kelly’s compelling and deeply felt story touches on themes of living with a chronic illness that threatens her personal and professional identities, talking to children about serious medical conditions and death, and recognizing the ways that physical limitations affect how we relate to our loved ones and shape how we understand ourselves.
This program is offered by Lake Oswego Public Library in cooperation with the Lake Theater & Café. Admission is free and no ticket is required (though food and drink purchase are encouraged to offset the cost to the Lake Theater). Doors open at 6:30 and the presentation begins at 7:00. Books will be available for sale and signing after the event, with proceeds and speakers’ fees donated to the Children’s Literacy Project, a national nonprofit organization based in Lake Oswego.
Advertisement
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Lake Theater & Cafe, 106 N State St,Lake Oswego,OR,United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
