Paula McClain was born in Fresno, California in 1965. She and her sisters moved around in the foster care system after her mother disappeared when Paula was four and her father was in and out of prison. Paula McClain received a degree in poetry from the University of Michigan and went on to publish the best selling fictionalised account of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage, The Paris Wife (2011). Prior to that she had published collections of poetry and her memoir of foster care, Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses (2003).