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Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Paula McLain is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, including The Paris Wife, Circling the Sun, and Love and Ruin, as well as two collections of poetry and a memoir. Her work has been published in over thirty-five countries, and featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Town & Country, Real Simple, and elsewhere.
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In Circling The Sun you return to the 1920s, a period you recreated so brilliantly in The Paris Wife, with a cast of characters who are just as fascinating. This time we're in colonial British Kenya, learning about Beryl Markham, a heroine both brave and fiercely self-reliant, but somewhat forgotten in history. What inspired you to write about Beryl?
Beryl was a totally wonderful accident as a subject. After The Paris Wife, I began working on another historical novel, but it just wouldn't come together. For whatever reason, I couldn't find the voice of the book, and was completely stuck. During that time—this would have been spring of 2013, I went on vacation to Orlando with my sister and soon-to-be-brother-in-law. He's a doctor and a pilot, and as we were poolside that weekend, he kept looking up from the book he was reading, Beryl Markham's West With the Night, and saying, "You have got to read about this woman. She's amazing." I was far too busy being miserable with the other project to listen, but took the book home and stashed it on a shelf in my dining room, where it gathered dust for another year and a half before I picked it up. When I finally did, though: wow! In an instant I was mesmerized by Beryl's voice&#...
Melanie Benjamin is the New York Times bestselling author of The Children's Blizzard, Mistress of the Ritz, The Girls in the Picture, The Swans of Fifth Avenue, The Aviator's Wife, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, and ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Paris Wife
Try:
The Aviator's Wife
by Melanie Benjamin
Amy Bloom is the author of four novels: White Houses, Lucky Us, Away, and Love Invents Us; and three collections of short stories: Where the God Of Love Hangs Out, Come to Me (finalist for the National Book Award), and A ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Paris Wife
Try:
White Houses
by Amy Bloom
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