Coming May 2027
A Field Guide to Staying:
Fighting for Women’s rights in Red America
When an Idaho arborist finds that silence comes at too high a cost, storytelling becomes a catalyst for action and change.
Pre-orders are now open!
What if staying in a place where women's rights are threatened is its own kind of resistance?
When arborist and wildland firefighter Jen Jackson Quintano first arrived in Idaho, she found economic opportunity, generous neighbors, and glorious terrain. Locals mistook her and her husband's ruggedness--including the trappings of their tree-removal business--for ideological alignment. But after the US Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs decision and Idaho's subsequent abortion ban transformed the lives of women, families, and health care providers, she faced a question so many people in politically divided America are asking: When the land where you live passes laws that do harm, do you leave, or do you stay and fight for the place you love?
Quintano realized her new home needed more than her assimilation and silence. In 2023, she organized a stage production of community-sourced abortion stories in Sandpoint--a North Idaho town better known for its wild landscapes, fierce independence, and deep conservatism than for public testimony about reproductive freedom. Two months after that first performance, the region's only hospital serving tens of thousands closed its labor and delivery unit. Physicians began fleeing new laws that made providing essential care to patients legally perilous. As the place she loved became harder to defend, Quintano reached an inflection point that would define how she showed up: for her community, for other women, and for herself.
Part memoir, part lyrical meditation on land, rewilding, and resilience, A Field Guide to Staying is an ode to a people and a place--and a call to personal and collective change. Here, women's stories accumulate like weather across a range--revealing how political decisions settle into bodies, families, and communities, reshaping the lived geography of care. Through a lens attuned to wilderness and habitat, Quintano's words trace how people remain rooted amid fracture--and how story can help us reclaim and remake the ground beneath our feet.
“In a state where Christian Nationalism and white supremacists have claimed significant territory, Quintano reminds us of the power of activism by cultivating a chorus of stories, drawing on not only personal experience but mythology, ecology, history, and much more: the result is a resounding howl, a love letter to the idea of home, a praise song, and a gimlet-eyed look at the challenges facing all of us who wish to create a more just world.”
—Judith Freeman, author of MacArthur Park and Red Water
“Read this terrific book—for courage, for inspiration, for the stunning beauty of the Idaho wilderness, and the bold vision of a brave woman forging a community of love and understanding through storytelling.”
—Kate Manning, author of My Notorious Life
“This raw, vulnerable, and honest account shows how she and other women have reclaimed their voices through storytelling as resistance–comparing it to “rewilding,” like the flowers that appear after a wildfire. Nobody is coming to save us, and Quintano shows us how to save ourselves: One story at a time, with each inspiring more people to join.”
—Rebecca Little, co-author of I’m Sorry for My Loss
“Her prose reflects Idaho’s breathless landscapes and reveals her deep love for the wild spaces she calls home and the stubborn, complicated people who live there. A Field Guide for Staying is a repudiation of shame and an embrace of humanity. A must read for anyone who’s ever been told, if you don’t like it here, leave.”
—Sara Maurer, author of A Good Animal
Advance Praise
“Jen is a poet-journalist.”
—Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
About Jen
Jen Jackson Quintano is the founder and executive director of The Pro-Voice Project, a grassroots organization that harnesses the power of storytelling to dismantle abortion stigma and advance reproductive autonomy in deeply conservative Idaho. Her work is rooted in the rugged landscapes of her home state, where she spent more than a decade working as an arborist before turning her focus to activism.
Quintano’s writing has appeared in publications including High Country News and The Seattle Times, and her work has been featured by The Guardian, Politico, PBS NewsHour, and TODAY. Her forthcoming book, A Field Guide to Staying: Fighting for Women’s Rights in Red America, will be published in May 2027 and is now available for pre-order on Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Broadleaf.
the work behind the book
A Field Guide to Staying grew from Jen’s work founding The Pro-Voice Project, an Idaho-based narrative change organization challenging abortion stigma and advancing reproductive rights through storytelling and community dialog.