Like Family - by Paula McLain (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

An account of the author's six-month journey from one end of Chile to the other. Her odyssey included Christmas Day spent with a llama sandwich on the Tropic of Capricorn, a sex hotel in the capital, and a trip around Cape Horn on a supply boat delivering a coffin.

Review Quotes

"What makes LIKE FAMILY so remarkable are not the peculiar circumstances of Paula McLain's childhood but the depth of understanding that she brings to those circumstances, and the beautiful prose in which she renders that understanding. Seldom have I seen so vividly evoked the need to belong to some, any, kind of family and the painful negotiations that time brings to even our closest intimacies."--Library Journal"Margot Livesey, author of Eva Moves the Furniture" (01/01/2003)

"LIKE FAMILY "isn't written to shock. McLain tells about horrors gently, edging toward them through the vivid and universal landscape of childhood, with its intense sensations its pleasures of taste, sight, and smell."

About the Author

After leaving California in 1987, Paula McLain spent the next decade in personal and professional vagabondage. She has worked in auto plants and hospitals and has been a cocktail waitress, a Christmas tree salesperson, a pizza maker, and an English teacher. In 1996, she received her MFA from the University of Michigan. Since then she has been in residence at Bread Loaf, Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony. At work on a novel, she lives in Madison, Wisconsin.