100 Books Like Paula

As part of Gen X, I was raised by a strong mother and surrounded by steely southern women, transforming their lives from housewives to more liberated women during the turbulent 1970s as women’s rights and civil rights blossomed. I admired second-wave feminists like Gloria Steinem and attended women’s studies courses in college. I was steeped in change, optimism, and hope for a better world for all. But this awareness was rooted in a critical eye to the past injustices and an understanding that the personal is the political, and how women live their lives, what obstacles they face, and how they handle them, is a testament to their power at home and in society. 

As part of Gen X, I was raised by a strong mother and surrounded by steely southern women, transforming their lives from housewives to more liberated women during the turbulent 1970s as women’s rights and civil rights blossomed. I admired second-wave feminists like Gloria Steinem and attended women’s studies courses in college. I was steeped in change, optimism, and hope for a better world for all. But this awareness was rooted in a critical eye to the past injustices and an understanding that the personal is the political, and how women live their lives, what obstacles they face, and how they handle them, is a testament to their power at home and in society. 

As part of Gen X, I was raised by a strong mother and surrounded by steely southern women, transforming their lives from housewives to more liberated women during the turbulent 1970s as women’s rights and civil rights blossomed. I admired second-wave feminists like Gloria Steinem and attended women’s studies courses in college. I was steeped in change, optimism, and hope for a better world for all. But this awareness was rooted in a critical eye to the past injustices and an understanding that the personal is the political, and how women live their lives, what obstacles they face, and how they handle them, is a testament to their power at home and in society. 

As part of Gen X, I was raised by a strong mother and surrounded by steely southern women, transforming their lives from housewives to more liberated women during the turbulent 1970s as women’s rights and civil rights blossomed. I admired second-wave feminists like Gloria Steinem and attended women’s studies courses in college. I was steeped in change, optimism, and hope for a better world for all. But this awareness was rooted in a critical eye to the past injustices and an understanding that the personal is the political, and how women live their lives, what obstacles they face, and how they handle them, is a testament to their power at home and in society. 

I am a nerdy economist who studies women and work. I am passionate about using data to understand the real lived experiences of women in today’s economy. Taylor Swift is my muse because she is not only authentic but persistent, a true “reinventionista” in her heart-of-hearts as she moves from era-to-era masterminding her path to long-term happiness and success. I want to live in a world where women’s lives are appreciated, understood, and supported. It’s why I do what I do and, in many respects, I also believe it is why Taylor Swift does what she does.

I grew up on a tiny peninsula in Downeast Maine, an evocative and rugged place, both lovely and haunting. As a girl, walking home late down gravel roads through an encompassing darkness I’ve found nowhere else, I sensed the world’s dangers long before I knew how to articulate them. Surrounded by woods, water, and unnerving quiet broken by the fox’s scream and rustling branches, I began to write. I sought out strange and unsettling books by Shirley Jackson and Stephen King (his home just a few towns away from mine) that left their mark. Storytelling became a way to process and explore what keeps me up at night. 

I came to the U.S. in my early twenties to pursue a PhD, trading the familiar for the unknown. I am a scientist, an immigrant, and a daughter whose life was irrevocably fractured when my mother passed away in India while I was navigating the demands of graduate school. Grappling with grief, identity, and belonging in a foreign land shaped me to my core. The books on this list, centered on themes of family, loss, and the search for home, resonated with my experiences in profound ways. They offered me hope and a vital sense of connection, and I hope they speak to you just as powerfully.

We all have obsessions in life and one of mine has been my mother and the great love and enmity that ricocheted between us for fifty-seven years. Throughout the decades, my mother went from protector to controller to betrayer to ogre to human to an elderly woman in my care. The love and hate, distance and intimacy, estrangement, and reconciliation that we experienced made me a lifelong student of the mother-daughter bond. I‘ve written about my mother for more than 30 years, and love reading mother-daughter stories, not saccharine sweet ones, but complex multi-layered dramas where there’s no villain and no hero—just two humans struggling to love and understand each other.

As you get to know the characters I create, you'll be imbued with a sense of hope and possibility–with the magic that can happen when someone pokes a toe out of her comfort zone and makes things happen. You'll relate to discrete characters, who like most women, desire and deserve true love, authentic relationships—whether they be friends, mothers, daughters, or lovers–and meaningful work. You'll care about their emotional hurts, the misunderstandings that cause them to stumble, and cheer them on as they make choices that ultimately lead them to create empowered, fulfilling lives. Hooking you from the first sentence, I'll ignite your brain's hardwired desire to learn what happens next. 

I’m Gen X, through and through. And because I grew up in that (glorious?) time before social media, I didn’t have the worry that my messy-woman missteps would be exposed online. But the trade-off to keeping my mistakes as private as possible was that I often felt like I couldn’t live boldly. So now I’m fascinated by the ways other women handle the messier aspects of their lives: the obsessions and frustrations, the secrets we all keep, the duality we choke down. I want to know what we’re each quietly starving for, what’s driving us when we strip away social expectation and are left to sit with our gnawing hungers.