Like Family by Paula Mclain

After reading and enjoying Paula Mclain's NYT best-seller The Paris Wife, I noted that she had published a memoir several year ago.  Like Family is Mclain's account of 14 years as a ward of the State of California. Paula and her sisters moved from house to house while in foster care after their parents abandoned them.

I found this all well written and devastatingly sad.  How can a mother just abandon her children, walk away and not look back? Paula and her sisters don't discuss this much, as they are so young when it all happens, but the writer reminds us that this very fact is at the center of her whole upbringing.  This memoir calls to mind basic questions about what is home and why we call somewhere in particular home.  The writing reminds me of Jeannette Walls classic memoir The Glass Castle.  One keeps turning pages hoping that these kids turn out okay...wondering if these kids will turn out okay.  They do, and the journey to find home and family is worth the read.

If you like memoir, this is one of the  best.  I am guessing that with The Paris Wife doing so well, people will want to reach back and give this true story another look.  Available at the Public Library.