PAULA DÁIL
All About Me
Paula's first publication was a Letter to the Editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper written when she was seven years old. In it she pleaded to spend the newspaper's annual Christmas fund donations to purchase shoes for the impoverished children of Hispanic migrant workers in California's Central Valley. On the Sunday before Christmas, the letter appeared on the newspaper's front page.
Later, after earning a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and entering into a career as an academic research professor of social welfare and public policy, she became widely published in the social sciences. She has received several awards for her feminist-oriented research, graduate teaching, and non-fiction writing. Her books have won two international book awards, an Independent Publishers Book Award, a Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, a coveted Booklist Starred Review, and twice been named the Non-fiction Book of the Year by the Council for Wisconsin Writers. Her Letters to the Editor and Op-Eds on contemporary social and political issues are published in various outlets and newspapers around the country. All of these are social justice-driven efforts inspired by Tikkun Olam - repairing the broken world we find ourselves living in.
A native Californian, she spent several years in a Catholic girls' boarding school but has not been an observant Catholic for most of her adult life. Ultimately, she abandoned Catholicism in favor of a spiritual and actual journey leading her closer to her deeper Jewish roots, which she reverently embraces. She belongs to B'nai Jeshurun Synagogue in New York City and currently resides in the Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest with her award-winning writer husband, their dog, and various other wildlife. Across her career, she has authored ten books, so far.
CONTACT: paulawdail@gmail.com
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Awards include:
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Council for Wisconsin Writers 2012 August Derleth - Kenneth Kingery Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award
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Council for Wisconsin Writers 2016 August Derleth - Norbert Bly Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award
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Independent Publisher’s First Place Non-Fiction Award
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Literary Titan First Place Award for fiction
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Reader’s Choice Second Place Award for fiction
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Pinnacle Book Achievement First Place Award
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International Book Festival First Place Award
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International Book Festival Honorable Mention
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Bookfest Second Place Award
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Booklist starred review for non-fiction
My HP Books
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Red Anemone – Secrets My Mother Never Told chronicles Natalie Barlow’s journey of self-discovery that begins when her estranged mother’s sudden death releases a storm of unrevealed family secrets going back to pre-WWII Germany. As Natalie navigates the complexities of her newly discovered Jewish identity, she comes face-to-face with the early 20th-century German immigrant experience, the deep antisemitism and anti-German sentiment that prevailed across America, and the personal costs this ugly reality extracted from generations of her own family. Ultimately, Natalie must face the question “What happens when you discover you are not the person you’ve always thought you were?” and consider whether, like Israel’s red anemones that carpet the western Negev and Dvira Forest of the southern Judean foothills year after year, she has the courage, resiliency and passion to embrace the personal changes that bring new beginnings.
reviews
FROM KIRKUS REVIEWS:
Poignant, disturbing, and historically and dramatically riveting.
In Dáil’s historical novel, a woman discovers her Jewish lineage when her estranged mother dies.
Prompted by the serendipitous discovery of her own previously unknown Jewish lineage, the author was inspired to imagine the life of a young woman leaving behind Germany and her family in 1912 to reconnect with a fiancé who had already emigrated to the United States. This story of the fictional Nathalie Weiss, her daughters Sarah and Rachael Rosenblum, and her namesake granddaughter, Natalie Barlow, is also an account of the struggle of Jewish immigrants who found themselves unwelcome in an increasingly antisemitic America. Readers meet Nathalie in 1910 Germany as she argues with her parents, who insist that it is time for her to marry. The matchmaker has chosen 29-year-old Eitan Rosenblum to be her betrothed (“he is now ready to finally settle down and become serious about life”). Despite Eitan’s determination to emigrate to the United States, a marriage contract is signed, and the couple agrees that Eitan will leave first, with Nathalie following him when she is ready to leave home. Two years later, she arrives in Elyria, Ohio, but despite her best efforts, she always feels like a stranger in an unfamiliar and threatening land. (Being both Jewish and German is a double hit.) Her daughters counter the bigotry by adopting false identities: When they leave home, Sarah changes her name to Sally Rose, and Rachael becomes Charlotte Rose. Charlotte’s daughter, Natalie, slowly unravels the complicated, occasionally confusing web of family secrets revealed through the letters and journals Charlotte left behind, written mostly in German. When Natalie enlists translation help from a disenchanted priest, their ensuing romance lifts the weight of America’s long-standing history of bigotry toward immigrants and anyone not white, Protestant, and male. The narrative, alternating between past and present, is packed full of information about the Jewish experience; Dáil skillfully captures Sally and Charlotte’s terror of being discovered. The story, a carefully composed study of emotional and psychological damage endured by those forced to hide their heritage, also serves as a cautionary message relevant to today’s culture of hostility toward immigrants.
Poignant, disturbing, and historically and dramatically riveting.
