Paulita is a multi-faceted author whose fiction primarily focuses on the complicated emotions women feel as they live seemingly ordinary lives, but often with an undercurrent of unhappiness from which they too often merely bury their feelings — until they no longer can, and then make life-altering choices, the kind that would startle nearly all the people those women know.
What Paulita says? "Women often don't realize how strong they are until they're forced out of their comfort zones … We can handle a lot, but if we pretend we don't feel scared or angry, then we aren't being realistic. My books focus on letting women come to terms with their emotions as they have adventures in the world, whether in France or on the Appalachian Trail."
It isn't that Paulita dislikes the United States, where she spent most of her life. But France, with its mountains, culture, affordable health care, far less expensive housing, great wine and more reasonable work hours suits her better just now. In short, she had the guts to do what she really wanted to do, and then made it happen. (I am envious.)
—Laura Belgrave
Paulita Kincer has an M.A. in journalism from American University. She has traveled to France 11 times, and still finds more to lure her back. She currently lives and teaches there, though she used to teach (college English) in Columbus, Ohio. She lives with her three teenagers, two cats and one husband. You can find her online at http://paulita-ponderings.blogspot.com/
Paris RunAway
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When divorced mom Sadie Ford realizes her 17-year-old daughter Scarlett has run away to Paris all she can imagine are terrorist bombings and sex slaves. After learning her daughter chased a French exchange student home, Sadie hops on the next plane in pursuit. She joins forces with the boy's father, Auguste, and the two attempt to find the missing teens. The chase takes Sadie and Auguste to the seedier side of Marseille, where their own connection is ignited. Since the divorce, Sadie has devoted herself to raising kids and putting her dreams on hold, but when her daughter needs her most, Sadie finds that concrete barrier to life beginning to crack. In her journey, she learns the difference between watching the hours pass and living.
Trail Mix
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In the tradition of Wild by Cheryl Strayed, comes a novel of two suburban women who decide to hike the Appalachian Trail, escaping their lives as moms and wives in search of nature, adventure, and the ultimate diet plan.
How does a woman know what she wants after spending 20 years thinking about her husband and children? Sometimes it takes a distraction from everyday life, time to examine the forest before the trees become clear. With no previous camping experience, Andi and Jess begin the 2100-mile odyssey from Georgia to Maine. The friends figure life on the trail can’t possibly be worse than dealing with disgruntled husbands, sullen teens home from college, and a general malaise that has crept up in their daily lives. At the very least, the women are bound to return home thin.
I See London I See France
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When her husband of a dozen years walks out in a huff, Caroline Sommers walks out too — to Europe, with her kids after impulsively selling her minivan for travel money. Tired of being the perfect wife, she escapes to rediscover herself, and possibly rekindle the unrequited love of a Frenchman from her college days. While shepherding her kids from London to Scotland then Paris to Provence, she finds herself at a crossroads. Does she choose love, or lust, in the arms of a European man, or should she try again with the father of her children and the man she truly loved, once?
The Summer of France
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When Fia Jennings loses her job at the local newspaper, she thinks she'll have the chance to bond with her teenage twins. As she realizes she may be too late to create the perfect family, she’s saved by a phone call from her great Uncle Martin who runs a bed and breakfast in Provence. Uncle Martin wants Fia to venture to France to run the B&B so he and his wife Lucie can travel. He doesn't tell Fia about the secret he hid in the house when he married Lucie after fighting in World War II, and he doesn't mention the people who are tapping his phone and following him, hoping to find the secret.
After much cajoling, Fia whisks her family to France and is stunned when Uncle Martin and Aunt Lucie leave the same day for a Greek cruise. She's thrown into the minutiae of a running the B&B without the benefit of speaking the language. Her dreams of family bonding time fade as her teenagers make French friends. Kasie joins a local swim team, riding off to practice on the back of a scooter each morning, hips tucked next to the 18-year-old French boy who teaches her to smoke brown cigarettes and drink red wine. West accompanies a pouty French teenager around the city, playing his guitar in the town squares to earn spending money. Fia's husband Grayson begins touring the countryside with a pretty French woman, and Fia resists the distractions of Christophe, a handsome French man. Why the whirlwind of French welcome, Fia wonders after she comes home from a day at the beach in Nice to find someone has ransacked the B&B.
Fia parses Uncle Martin's obscure phone calls, trying to figure out this WW II hero's secret. Can she assuage Uncle Martin's World War II guilt and build the family she's always dreamed of?
French Masquerade: a short story
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As Joanna's only son graduates and her marriage stumbles to an unexpected close, an old friend drags her to Paris to drown her sorrows in wine, museums and men with accents. Can the City of Light ignite a spark in Joanna or only torch songs from her younger days?