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"A sobering reflection on verbal and psychological abuse [that] honors the healing power of female friendship and questions the nature of divinity beyond its constricting patriarchal manifestations. A searching and deeply empathetic memoir." -Kirkus Reviews

Join us for a conversation between journalist Blaise Gomez and award-winning essayist Amy Butcher, author of Mothertrucker, a book that interrogates the realities of female fear, abusive relationships, and America’s quiet epidemic of intimate partner violence set against the geography of remote, northern Alaska. 

Accomplished college professor, mentor, and writer Amy Butcher seemingly had her life together in 2018, but privately, she was the victim of domestic violence. Embarrassed and emotionally fraught by her partner’s increasingly dangerous and explosive behavior, Amy reached out to Instagram celebrity Joy “Mothertrucker” Wiebe. Joy was a 50-year-old wife and mother and the nation’s only female ice road trucker, a woman who maneuvered big rigs across the deadliest, loneliest, and most isolated road in America, Alaska’s James W. Dalton Highway. She was everything Amy wanted to be: independent, fearless, and in charge of her life in a landscape dominated by men. After months of communication, Amy, desperate to escape her situation in Ohio, accepted Joy’s invitation to ride shotgun as she drove her massive truck up the treacherous and exhilarating Alaskan highway, discovering meaning, strength, and friendship amidst a desolate Arctic landscape.

Blaise Gomez is a two-time Emmy nominated journalist for News12 Hudson Valley and is one of their senior reporters, responsible for stories in Orange County and the greater Hudson Valley area. She is a 2006 magna cum laude Communications graduate of Pace University in Pleasantville. Blaise began her career as an afternoon newscaster with WRCR AM1300 in Rockland County and quickly transitioned to television at Cable 6 News in Orange County. She began working as a freelance reporter for News12 in 2007 and was promoted to a full-time bureau reporter in 2014. Blaise has covered nationally recognized stories such as the Laura Garza murder case, the Sandy Hook tragedy, and the ‘kayak killer’ - Angelika Graswald. Her coverage on religious, political, and societal issues involving the Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel and her interview with West Point’s first female brigadier general, Cindy Jebb, garnered two Emmy nods. On a personal note, Blaise is a domestic violence survivor and staunch advocate for domestic violence awareness and legal reform surrounding DV issues. She currently lives in Cornwall with her fiancé and two children.