Starting from Here: A Novel

by Paula Saunders

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593978290
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/26/2025
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

Starting From Here is a stirring, stunning novel about the desire for a certain kind of life and the quest to find it. Paula Saunders has written an ode to independence, transformation, and coming of age that is also an evocative time capsule brimming with memory and feeling. What a wonderful book this is.”—Meg Wolitzer, New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion

“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—and as a mother it was bracing to remember that getting lost is how we find ourselves.”—Miranda July, New York Times bestselling author of All Fours

“I read Paula Saunders’s page-turning second novel, Starting from Here, in one intoxicating gulp. The story demands it. It’s a mother-daughter wrangle and also our Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl. Barely pubescent René’s quest to command the stage as a prima ballerina leads her from a Dakota berg to sparkling Manhattan. Along the way, the lonely young woman is half-starved, pawed at and preyed upon, seduced, rejected, and, since her body is her instrument, ruthlessly judged. Saunders wowed me with her psychological acuity in her debut, The Distance Home, and this new offering exceeds that jewel. Brava!”—Mary Karr, New York Times bestselling author of The Liars' Club

“Paula Saunders’s Starting from Here follows René, the indelible protagonist of The Distance Home, as she navigates family and dancing through her tumultuous 1970s adolescence. Saunders brilliantly captures the richness, awfulness, and blooming exhilaration of this girl’s life, careening from tortured family love to uneasy independence and back again. This is a beautiful novel.”—Claire Messud, New York Times bestselling author of This Strange Eventful History



Praise for The Distance Home

“The Distance Home becomes a meditation on the violence of American ambition—and a powerful call for self-examination.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Penetrating and insightful.”—Publishers Weekly

“Saunders’s debut is an exquisite, searing portrait of family and of people coping with whatever life throws at them while trying to keep close to one another. . . . The Distance Home will leave readers eager for more from this extraordinarily talented author.”—Booklist, starred review

From the Publisher