Postponed on account of success: McLain at Coventry Library April 27

Author Paula McLain was scheduled to speak at the Coventry Library on Wednesday, April 20, but that was before her latest book hit store book shelves in February.

“McLain had to reschedule her talk for April 27,” said Pat Gray, Coventry Library branch manager, “because people can’t get enough of her.” Her visit is part of a local author series sponsored by Appletree Books, Coventry Library and Mac’s Backs Bookstore.

McLain will discuss and sign her bestselling new novel, The Paris Wife. Set during the time of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast and The Sun Also Rises, The Paris Wife captures the voice and heart of Hadley Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, in her role as a woman trying to find her place in the tumultuous world of 1920s Paris.

McLain will be joined by writer Terry Dubow who teaches classes on the Lost Generation.

While McLain lives in Cleveland, she teaches in the MFA Poetry program at New England College. Her first book of poetry, Less of Her, was published in 1999.

Paula McLain was born in Fresno, California in 1965. After being abandoned by both parents, she and her two sisters became wards of the California court system, moving in and out of various foster homes for the next 14 years. When she aged out of the system, she supported herself by working as a nurse's aide in a convalescent hospital, a pizza delivery girl, an auto plant worker and a cocktail waitress before discovering that she could (and very much wanted to) write. These experiences inform her memoir Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses.