Banquets to benefit the hungry and homeless. Banquets to benefit parks and recreation. Banquets to benefit battered women, early childhood education, youth in need of mental health services.
They’re all great causes. And great local nonprofit agencies regularly put on fundraising functions that are enjoyable, social … polite and predictable.
But you can’t predict the weather, which was why Lee Child, a best-selling thriller author and the speaker booked for Thursday’s benefit event for the Fort Vancouver Regional Library Foundation, couldn’t make it here from New York City in time.
(Why couldn’t he commandeer a helicopter, fly it upside-down above the clouds, parachute into the Columbia River and fight sea lions and monster salmon and churning sternwheelers on his way to the banquet? Beats us.)
So the library foundation cried out for help to a local thriller author, Chelsea Cain of Portland — and Cain did not disappoint. In fact, she probably gave the healthy crowd of 700 or so literature lovers a bit more than they bargained for.
A glass of wine was her partner at the podium. Since she’d gotten the surprise speaking invitation only hours earlier, she said, it would help loosen her tongue. Her tales of becoming a thriller writer were sprinkled with her most embarrassing moments, including the time she handed a respected professor a tampon instead of a pen.
She asked the audience for a round of applause for the Green River Killer because he’s our local serial killer. She liberally used a certain four-letter intensifier you don’t usually hear from banquet keynote speakers.
Somewhere along the way, she described the creepy basement in North Portland where she first started writing thrillers. She couldn’t believe the horrors pouring out of her own imagination, she said.
But subsequent success taught her that when her writing gets edgy and dangerous and maybe objectionable — that’s when she’s doing it right.
Some dude who seemed like he’d probably had a few himself stepped up and topped off Cain’s wine glass. The delighted audience laughed and cheered.
When it comes to throwing a party, those librarians wrote the book!
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