Starting from Here

By Paula Sanders
** Publication Date 26 August 2025 **
​4 stars


A coming of age tale of pursuing your dream and the stumbling blocks along the way.


Rene is a young girl with a gift for ballet. She’s grown up in a small town in South Dakota, but dreams of being a prima ballerina someday. When her local teacher retires and moves away, Rene is bereft, lost without someone to guide her in her training. So follows several cities and several homes and many unexpected follies. Rene hasn’t even finished high school but has been around the block. 


This novel touches on what it takes to pursue what your heart desires more than anything. While for Rene it is ballet, you could substitute your dream for Rene’s and most of us have been there. Told with honesty and pain and triumph, Starting from Here takes us through several years of a young, naive girl’s life in the 1970s.


While I did love most of this novel, some of it was hard to take. There were times that I felt as though Rene’s family had forsaken her completely - sending her off to other states to live with people they didn’t know and situations that she never should have been subjected to. Yet, then there is Rene’s desire to do this one thing - dance. Maybe the family was just doing what they could to help her escape her small town life.


This novel was so beautifully composed and presented. I loved the shorter chapters that really captured a moment in time. The only two characters that were fully formed were Rene and her mother Eve, though that’s all I felt you really needed. The remainder of the characters were simply supporting cast members seen through Rene’s eyes.


I read this book in two sittings, which points to how engrossing it is. I enjoyed it immensely and would recommend it.