Where: Quatrefoil Library, 1220 E. Lake St., Mpls.

Tickets: Free

A farm boy from northern Minnesota finds his way to “the cities” when he arrives at the University of Minnesota in 1970. Things change fast.

In his new memoir, Mark Abramson writes about touring Europe at 18 as a sax-playing member of an all-American big band.

The five years that follow find him studying music at the U, trying marijuana, joining protests against the Vietnam war and coming out as a gay man. It’s a long trip from smalltown pinochle games, Lawrence Welk on TV and hail-damaged soybean fields to hippie communes, symphony concerts at Northrop Auditorium and dancing at the old Sutton’s bar in downtown Minneapolis. But Abramson knits it together in his warm, honest and straightforward prose.

Threaded throughout the book are Abramson’s regular visits and phone chats with his aging mother, Beulah.

Abramson, who moved to San Francisco in the mid-1970s, has published a mystery series called “Beach Reading,” a later-in-life memoir in two parts and several nonfiction books. Come hear him read from and talk about his just-published, Minnesota-specific book.