Library holding event with author of book on boom towns that profiles Punxsy
PUNXSUTAWNEY — The Punxsutawney Memorial Library will hold an event celebrating local first responders with the author of a book on boom towns that includes a chapter on Punxsutawney.
Author Robin Lynn Behl, 46, will be signing books and reading from her award-winning nonfiction memoir “Price Per Barrel: The Human Cost of Extraction”on Monday.
This free event will take place from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the library at 301 E. Mahoning St., Suite 4, in downtown Punxsutawney.
Books will be available for purchase by cash, credit card or Venmo, and donations to the library are encouraged.
Behl is a former firefighter, paramedic and dispatcher who traveled the United States and Canada researching public safety agencies in challenging local environments.
“Price Per Barrel” profiles healthcare providers and first responders in oil boom towns and mining communities, at major events like the Indianapolis 500 auto race, and in special environments like the International Space Station.
She said her book is part memoir, part travelogue, and it provides an inside look at life in the typical American firehouse.
Chapter 16 of the book profiles the borough of Punxsutawney and the collaborative efforts of public safety agencies across Jefferson County to keep the community and its visitors safe and healthy while the world awaits the most famous forecaster on Feb. 2.
“The book looks at healthcare and public safety in different boom towns across North America, and the boom can be where a town has a sudden population increase that is shortlived like Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day, or like an oil boom or mining,” she said, adding that it places stress on firefighters, police, paramedics, emergency rooms and dispatch centers.
“I drove around the country and took a long road trip, spent about six months living out of my truck in the different
communities, whether the stress of the boom is currently going on or they had a boom that has been busted,” Behl said. “
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. That early passion for helping people was solidified during her undergraduate tenure at New Mexico State University, where she continued her service and training as a firefighter and EMT.
She would go on to spend 13 years in emergency services with a variety of agencies around the country, becoming a paramedic and a dispatcher.
She earned a master’s degree in medicine at the University of New England, in Portland, Maine, and worked as a physician assistant in cardiovascular medicine for seven years.
In that time, she had the opportunity to train and work in the Arctic, both in Alaska and in Greenland.
Her love for remote
northern climates inspired “Price Per Barrel: The Human Cost of Extraction,” her first non-fiction book. Behl was previously published in academic journals related to her medical practice, including “The Hidden Field of View: Challenges in Sustaining a Robotic Open-Heart Program” for the Indian Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and “Robotic Surgery: Would Any Other (More Accurate) Name Smell as Sweet?” for the Journal of Robotic Surgery.
In her travels, Behl has visited every state in the union, every province in Canada and more than three dozen countries. She has left the practice of medicine and now works in documentary filmmaking. She is a dancer and a choreographer who feels most at home when she’s on a stage.
She is currently working on her next book, “Insensible Loss: Why Doctors Quit.” It’s 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.