What happened to Paula On the death of an American girl

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.

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.