CAMDEN — The Camden Public Library welcomes new Maine author Bill Portela for his presentation “Evolution in an Hour,” based on his recent book, The Eleventh Layer: Origins of Human Evolution on Thursday, March 7, at 6:30 p.m. in the Picker Room and on Zoom. Portela will also share insight about non-fiction writing and publishing.

This is a hybrid program and will take place in the Picker Room as well as on Zoom. To attend virtually, visit librarycamden.org, or visit https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rCN0ljVQSE-6n5_blfvH1Q]

About Portela's book, The Eleventh Layer:

The quest for nature and truth is one of the most crucial explorations we can undertake. Yet often, our lives become too overwhelmed to embark on this journey. This stirring journal takes us back five billion years as Earth transformed from star particles into the incubator for all known life in our universe. Darwin’s harsh laws of survival seem balanced by symbiotic theories proving that organic cooperation is a universal constant to our being.

Thriving varieties of plants and fungi forged alliances inland, allowing fledgling animals to inhabit new ecologies far removed from their coastlines of origin. Animal body sizes burst in magnitude over a thousandfold. Developmental schemes now managed complicated patterns for constructing all living creatures, from water fleas to humpback whales.

In this far-reaching study, Bill Portela invites readers to consider the role of evolution in their personal, spiritual framework.

Bill Portela has been a wildlife rehabilitator, as well as a breeder and trainer for workhorses for thirty years. He has taught subjects, including biology, for over forty years in elementary, middle, high school, university, service, and private sectors. His training as a systems engineer allowed him to spend twenty years evaluating (and correcting) how complex systems either do or do not function successfully.