Former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Maya Rao will join us at the Pen and Pencil Club on June 21 to discuss her recently released book on the North Dakota oil boom, titled Great American Outpost: Dreamers, Mavericks, and the Making of an Oil Frontier. Andy Maykuth, the Inquirer’s energy reporter, will join Rao to help guide the conversation about the wild modern-day gold rush that Rao explores in her narrative nonfiction book and how it connects to us in Philadelphia. Rao lived in the oilfield for a year, even cashiering at a truck stop for a month. She rode with truck drivers braving toxic fumes and dangerous roads, dined with businessmen disgraced during the financial crisis, and wove together dispatches about man camps, oil waste disposal and tribal conflicts. As the boom receded, empty trailers and idle oil equipment littered the prairie alongside the abandoned homesteads of the old North Dakota frontier. Rao was there to capture it all.