Contents May Have Shifted: A Novel - Softcover

Pam Houston is the prize-winning author of Contents May Have Shifted, among other books. She is professor of English at the University of California–Davis and lives on a ranch at 9,000 feet in Colorado near the headwaters of the Rio Grande.

“If [Houston’s] unlucky in love, she's certainly lucky in prose. She makes everyday accidental details of nature fly vividly off the page.”
- Alan Cheuse, NPR

“Houston is a wonderful writer, and her graceful vignettes are by turns beautiful, slyly funny and heart-stopping.”
- Rebecca Barry, San Francisco Chronicle

“Houston builds her story out of 132 highly crafted vignettes identified by place names―gems in a constantly changing mosaic.”
- Jane Ciabattari, Boston Globe

“Houston is a consummate yarn spinner―smart, funny, and elegant―and her autobiographically tinged book is full of vignette realizations, beautiful scenery, and amazing adventures by a narrator you’d kill to have as a best friend.”
- Courtney Ferguson, Portland Mercury

“A tale so vivid, intricate, and intimate that it puts high-def TV to shame: One moment, we’re straddling lava flowing from a Hawaiian volcano; the next, we’re watching thousands of glowworms light up a New Zealand cave...Peppered throughout is advice to live by, stuff worth scribbling down and posting on your inspiration board for when that dark cloud rolls in.”
- Natasha Clark, Elle

“True to its title, each snippet harbors small dips and rises that add up to cumulative wisdom by book’s end, and a satisfying arc of anecdote that makes a convincing whole.”
- Ben Fulton, Salt Lake Tribune

“Eat, Pray, Love meets Up in the Air in this engaging novel about a woman whose craving for adventure (and jerk of a boyfriend) sends her flying.”
- O, The Oprah Magazine

“A driving kinetic energy...keeps the reader whirling as Pam turns an observant and critical eye on herself, her relationship, and her country...Houston is as adept a writer as she is an adventurer. And it’s her writing with its startling images of the natural world that set this book apart from the rest.”
- Erika Recordon, Oregonian