About this item
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.
About the Author
Katherine Dykstra is a writer, editor and teacher. Her essays have been published in The Washington Post, Crab Orchard Review, The Common, Shenandoah, Gulf Coast, Brain, Child, Poets and Writers, Real Simple and the Random House anthology 20 Something Essays by 20 Something Writers, among other places. She was recently named an "artist to watch" by Creative Capital for her work on the Paula Oberbroeckling story. She lives with her husband and two children.To learn more about Katherine, visit her website, www.katherinedykstra.com
