What happened to Paula On the death of an American girl

Katherine Dykstra

Book - 2021

"A riveting investigation into a cold case asks how much control women have over their bodies and the direction of their lives. In July 1970, eighteen-year-old Paula Oberbroeckling left her house in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and never returned. A cold case for fifty years, Paula's story had been largely forgotten when Katherine Dykstra began looking for answers. A woman was dead. Why had no one been held responsible? How could a community give up and move on? Could there ever be justice for Paula? Tracing the knowns and unknowns, Dykstra discovers a girl who was hemmed in by the culture of the late 1960s, when women's rights had been brought to the fore but had little practical bearing on actual lives. The more she learns about Pau...la, the more parallels Dykstra finds in the lives of the women who knew Paula, the lives of the women in her own family, and even in her own life. Captivating and expertly crafted, What Happened to Paula is a timely, powerful look at gender, autonomy, and the cost of being a woman"--

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Subjects
Genres
Case studies
True crime stories
Published
New York, NY : W. W. Norton & Company [2021]
Language
English
Main Author
Katherine Dykstra (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xiv, 291 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9780393651980
  • Preface
  • Chapter 1. The Crime
  • Chapter 2. An Inheritance
  • Chapter 3. The Girl
  • Chapter 4. Her Birthright
  • Chapter 5. Her Coming of Age
  • Chapter 6. The Black Boyfriend
  • Chapter 7. The Detective
  • Chapter 8. The City
  • Chapter 9. The White Boyfriend
  • Chapter 10. The Timeline
  • Chapter 11. The Flood
  • Chapter 12. The Double Bind
  • Chapter 13. Her Options
  • Chapter 14. The Phone Call
  • Chapter 15. The True Crime
  • Chapter 16. The Paulas
  • Afterword
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Selected Readings
Review by Booklist Review

Writer and editor Dykstra took over the project of writing about Paula Oberbroeckling, a white 19-year-old murdered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1970, from her mother-in-law, a fiction writer who grew up in Cedar Rapids as Paula's contemporary. Combining memoir with true crime, à la I'll Be Gone in the Dark, and with social history, like in Becky Cooper's We Keep the Dead Close, Dykstra follows many leads, but, rather than solve the 50-year-old cold case, she seeks to examine "the bigger mystery of how society could have allowed her to die." While Paula's disappearance and death received little media attention, and the police investigation revealed unhurriedness and inconsistency, local theories proliferated, mostly regarding two men Paula dated before she died, one Black, one white, and a rumored pregnancy and ensuing, deadly illegal abortion. Delving into studies of beauty, violence toward women, racism, and women's sovereignty over their own bodies in the last half-century, Dykstra recounts scares and opportunities she and the women in her family experienced. Hand to fans of this popular genre blend.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Journalist Dykstra debuts with a sobering, well-crafted account of her efforts to solve a 50-year-old cold case. In 1970, 18-year-old Paula Oberbroeckling, who lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, borrowed her roommate's car in the middle of the night and never returned. Four months later, her decomposed body was found bound and dumped in a ditch. At the time Oberbroeckling went missing, she had a boyfriend, though she had recently broken up with another boyfriend, who was Black, and she might have been pregnant. Neither the police nor the local media had any interest in the case, and in 1972 her police file was closed. The case was ultimately deemed unsolvable due to passing time and the loss of evidence from a flood in 2008. Did Oberbroeckling die of a botched illegal abortion, or was she the victim of someone she knew or of a random killer? The main narrative focuses on the author's research into case files and interviews with those who knew the girl, but in the end she admits she may never know who killed her. Meanwhile, Dykstra casts a searing light on racism, sexism, and the stigma of being a "bad" girl. This is the perfect blueprint for any true crime writer moved to investigate a cold case. Agent: Duvall Osteen, Aragi. (June)Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated the name of the town Paula Oderbroeckling lived in.

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