Why am I passionate about this?

I was raised in the Midwest by parents who told me I could have whatever kind of life I wanted. I took them at their word, never considering that my gender might come with limitations. It wasn’t until I had my first child and began investigating Paula’s case that the true complexity of womanhood began to dawn on me. I’ve since spent nine years reading and writing and thinking about the experience of being a woman in the modern world. 


I wrote

What Happened to Paula: An Unsolved Death and the Danger of American Girlhood

By Katherine Dykstra,

Book cover of What Happened to Paula: An Unsolved Death and the Danger of American Girlhood

What is my book about?

A People Best Book of Summer
A New York Times Most Anticipated Book of the Summer

A riveting investigation into…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Girlhood

Katherine Dykstra Why did I love this book?

Girlhood was published while I was in edits and though I bought the book, I couldn’t risk reading it. The subject matter was too close to my own. What if I wanted to add or (gasp) rewrite? I’m glad I waited. Febos’ stunning essays perfectly encapsulate the confusion of adolescent girlhood, the mixed messages—from adults, from our own bodies—and the traps that lay in wait.My favorite, “The Mirror Test,” contains lines that crackle such as: “Before it carried any sexual connotation, the word slut was a term for a slovenly woman… A slut was a careless girl, hands sunk haphazardly into the dough…—eyes cast out the window, mouth humming a song, always thinking of something else. Oh was I ever a messy child. A real slut in the making.”

By Melissa Febos,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Girlhood as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
National Bestseller
Lambda Literary Award Finalist

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME * NPR * The Washington Post * Kirkus Reviews * Washington Independent Review of Books * The Millions * Electric Literature * Ms Magazine * Entropy Magazine * Largehearted Boy * Passerbuys

“Irreverent and original.” –New York Times

“Magisterial.” –The New Yorker

“An intoxicating writer.” –The Atlantic

“A classic!” –Mary Karr

“A true light in the dark.” –Stephanie Danler

“An essential, heartbreaking project.” –Carmen Maria Machado

A gripping set of stories about the forces that shape girls…


Book cover of Salvage the Bones

Katherine Dykstra Why did I love this book?

When I am asked whether my next book will also be true crime, I say that my wheelhouse isn’t actually true crime but stories about pregnant teenage girls. This extends to my reading material. Salvage the Bones is a heart-stopping novel about a 15-year-old girl being raised by her widowed father in small-town Mississippi. In the calm before Hurricane Katrina, Esch and her three brothers—who alternately play basketball, raise pit bulls to dogfight and get in the way—are only just getting by. But Esch has a secret, which threatens to tip her life into chaos—there’s a baby growing inside of her. This book shines a light on the vast unfairness of the responsibility of pregnancy. I all but held my breath for the last 50 pages.

By Jesmyn Ward,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked Salvage the Bones as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

_______________ 'A brilliantly pacy adventure story ... Ward writes like a dream' - The Times 'Fresh and urgent' - New York Times 'There's something of Faulkner to Ward's grand diction' - Guardian _______________ WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Hurricane Katrina is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. He's a hard drinker, largely absent, and it isn't often he worries about the family. Esch and her three brothers are stockpiling food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets;…


Book cover of Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen

Katherine Dykstra Why did I love this book?

This novel might have been published a half-century ago, but the situation—wherein beauty is currency, women’s bodies with their bleeding and their smells are betrayers, and the institution of marriage is, well, an institution—feels more than relevant today. The book’s protagonist, Sasha Davis is a former prom-queen who is aware of all the possibility that exists outside of the confines of her loveless marriage. Liberated, she makes moves to extricate herself from the relationship, but what she can't shed is the very thing that holds her back: her own womanhood. The book’s tone, a sort of “Can you believe I have to put up with this?” is rife with humor even as it lays out the fury-making double standards women had to face then (and now).

By Alix Kates Shulman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD

The cult classic that defined a generation - first UK publication in 47 years

'An extraordinary novel ... women will like it and men should read it for the good of their immortal souls' Los Angeles Times

Sasha Davis has everything a girl in 1950s suburbia could want: beauty, intelligence and an all-star sports captain boyfriend. All she needs to succeed is to keep her skin clear and her intelligence hidden under her Prom Queen tiara.

But when she drops out of college to marry, Sasha soon realises her life has become a fearful countdown…


Book cover of The Mars Room

Katherine Dykstra Why did I love this book?

The Mars Room is the bar in San Francisco where Romy Hall used to give lap dances. It’s also the catalyst for the event that landed her in a high-security women’s prison serving two consecutive life sentences far away from her seven-year-old son. In addition to the sky-high stakes and Kushner’s incisive prose, what thrilled me about this novel is the way it’s told, on dual tracks. The present is Romy’s experience of incarceration, and the past is a slow reveal of everything that led up to her imprisonment. The tension mounts and mounts until finally we learn the circumstances of her crime, infuriating evidence of the ways society sets women up to fail. 

By Rachel Kushner,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Mars Room as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018**
**A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF 2018**

'An unforgettable novel.' DAILY TELEGRAPH
'More knowing about prison life [than Orange Is The New Black]... so powerful.' NEW YORK TIMES
'One of America's finest writers.' VOGUE

Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences, plus six years, at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility. Outside is the world from which she has been permanently severed: the San Francisco of her youth, changed almost beyond recognition. The Mars Room strip club where she once gave lap dances for a living. And…


Book cover of Girl, Interrupted

Katherine Dykstra Why did I love this book?

Susanna Kaysen’s memoir, about the two years she spent confined to a mental institution by a doctor who’d only ever spent 15 minutes with her, is about how society determines who gets to walk free and who cannot. This is an interesting question in itself, but what moved me most was the book’s exploration of relationships between girls: their alliances and feuds, the ways they hurt each other, and the ways they help, holding one another up in the hardest of circumstances. For it’s Kaysen’s fellow patients—including the defiant, unpredictable Lisa, the gentle, self-immolating Polly, and the know-it-all, true blue Georgina—who are the true life of this slight but searing book. 


By Susanna Kaysen,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Girl, Interrupted as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Futaro Uesugi is a second-year in high school, scraping to get by and pay off his family's debt. The only thing he can do is study, so when Futaro receives a part-time job offer to tutor the five daughters of a wealthy businessman, he can't pass it up. Little does he know, these five beautiful sisters are quintuplets, but the only thing they have in common is that they're all terrible at studying! At this rate, the sisters can't graduate, and Futaro must think of a plan that suits each of them - which feels hopeless when five-out-of-five of these…


Explore my book 😀

What Happened to Paula: An Unsolved Death and the Danger of American Girlhood

By Katherine Dykstra,

Book cover of What Happened to Paula: An Unsolved Death and the Danger of American Girlhood

What is my book about?

A People Best Book of Summer
A New York Times Most Anticipated Book of the Summer

A riveting investigation into a cold case asks how much control women have over their bodies and the direction of their lives.

July 1970. Eighteen-year-old Paula Oberbroeckling left her house in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Four months later, her remains were discovered just beyond the mouth of a culvert overlooking the Cedar River. Her homicide has never been solved.

Fifty years cold, Paula’s case had been mostly forgotten when journalist Katherine Dykstra began looking for answers. A woman was dead. Why had no one been held responsible? How could the powers that be, how could a community, have given up? Tracing Paula’s final days, Dykstra uncovers a girl whose exultant personality was at odds with the Midwest norms of the late 1960s. A girl who was caught between independence and youthful naivete, between a love that defied racially segregated Cedar Rapids and her complicated but enduring love for her mother, and between a possible pregnancy and the freedoms that had been promised by the women’s liberation movement but that still had little practical bearing on actual lives. The more Dykstra learned about the circumstances of Paula’s life, the more parallels she saw in the lives of the women who knew Paula and the women in Paula’s family, in the lives of the women in Dykstra’s own family, and even in her own life.

Captivating and expertly crafted from interviews with Paula’s family and friends, police reports, and on-the-scene investigation, What Happened to Paula is part true crime story, part memoir, a timely and powerful look at gender, autonomy, and the cost of being a woman.

Book cover of Girlhood
Book cover of Salvage the Bones
Book cover of Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen

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Bailey and the CEO: A Corporate Love Story

By Amy Q. Barker,

Book cover of Bailey and the CEO: A Corporate Love Story

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author Avid reader Nature lover Park ranger wanna be Best Nana ever

Amy's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

A contemporary romance novel about second chances, love in the workplace, and balancing single parenthood with a career. Bailey Grant and Fox Goodman have given up on love. They’re working hard, they’re raising kids—romance is the last thing on their minds. Until they get seated next to each other on a flight and realize they have more in common than just the company where they work.

But can a VP date the CEO? How will they make it work? Wait and see how sparks fly in this uplifting, feel-good, dual-narrative romantic read!

Bailey and the CEO: A Corporate Love Story

By Amy Q. Barker,

What is this book about?

Bailey
Even from afar, you could feel it: the man's ever-present, effortless charm, looks, and for lack of a better word, swagger.
Everyone—and by everyone, I meant every female at Havelin—had speculated about his personal life. We all knew he had two sons, but what about a wife?
Not that I cared.
I was VP of Quality, a widow, and a mother raising two teenage daughters. Love was the last thing on my mind.

Fox
She was staggeringly beautiful.
And she didn’t know it. Not even in the slightest. Not a clue.
I’d never felt like this before.
Even more…


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