Starting from Here

A Midwestern girl balances her dreams of becoming a dancer with the complications of growing up on her own, far from her working-class family, in this “stirring, stunning novel about the desire for a certain kind of life and the quest to find it” (Meg Wolitzer).

“The sharp physicality of Paula Saunders’s writing hooked me; it was utterly engrossing to feel chills, hunger and lust through the body of this young dancer.”—Miranda July, New York Times bestselling author of All Fours

She could look in the mirror and see it all happening, everything she’d dreamed of, the potential everyone had seen in her blossoming right in front of her eyes, as if her spirit and flesh were merging, being born as one into light.

More than anything, René wants to be a dancer. Eve, her mother, supports René despite the overwhelming financial burden and increasing tension her training places on the family. But one thing is clear: René’s dreams are never going to come true in Rapid City, South Dakota, circa 1973.

Setting in motion a journey that will transform her from the inside out, René is sent to train alongside stick-thin, sculpted girls in Phoenix, then on to Denver and beyond, encountering along the way a dazzling sequence of eccentric and sometimes dangerous characters: creepy dads, mean girls, predatory radio announcers, kindly ex-opera singers, sham teachers, and avaricious cult leaders. Through it all, René pushes herself, doing everything she can to excel at her art while at the same time finding her way through the trials of adolescence.

But leaving home is not the same as escaping it. And try as she might, René can’t quite shake the aching she has for someone to love and accept her just the way she is, dancer or not, successful or not, perfect or imperfect.

Lyrical and incisive, Starting from Here is a story of facing the many challenges and terrors of girlhood, of reaching for something that exceeds your grasp, of the enduring contradictions of familial love, of right steps and wrong turns, and of somehow finding your way from wherever you are to wherever you need to go.

Paula Saunders grew up in Rapid City, South Dakota. She is a graduate of the Syracuse University creative writing program and was awarded a postgraduate Albert Schweitzer Fellowship at the State University of New York at Albany, under then-Schweitzer chair Toni Morrison. Her first book, The Distance Home, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and named one of the best books of the year by Real Simple. She lives in California with her husband. They have two grown daughters.