Laura Bell discusses and sign her new book about the modern WestClaiming Ground (Knopf, $24.95).  

In 1977, Laura Bell, at loose ends after graduating from college, leaves her family home in Kentucky for a wild and unexpected adventure: herding sheep in Wyoming's Big Horn Basin   Her new memoir reveals the rough, enormous beauty of the Western landscape and the peculiar sweetness of hard labor - it is an ode to a life formed by nature, and is a vivid account of her search for a place to belong.  By turns cattle ranger, forest ranger, outfitter, masseuse, wife and mother, Bell's story recounts her struggle to find solid earth in which to put down roots.