A Midwestern girl balances her dreams of becoming a dancer with the complications of growing up on her own, far from her working-class family, in this lithe, hopeful portrait of a young woman striving for greatness, from the author of The Distance Home

She could look in the mirror and see it all happening, everything she’d dreamed of, the potential everyone had seen in her blossoming right in front of her eyes, as if her spirit and flesh were merging, being born as one into light.

More than anything—more than friends or boyfriends or food or sleep or good grades—René wants to be a classical ballet dancer. Eve, her mother, supports René despite the overwhelming financial burden her training puts on the family and the screaming fights they get into with increasing frequency. But one thing is clear: René's dreams are never going to come true in Rapid City, South Dakota, circa 1973.

Setting in motion a journey that will transform her from the inside out, René is sent to train alongside the stick-thin, sculpted girls at Mr. B’s studio in Phoenix, Arizona. Her host parents have little sympathy for a teenage girl far from home and their daughter, Gali, takes great pleasure in tormenting René at every opportunity. Nevertheless, René pushes herself, doing everything she can to excel at her chosen art while at the same time finding her way through the trials of adolescence.

Still, leaving home is not the same as escaping it. As she travels farther and farther from Rapid City and from her mother, René can’t quite shake the aching she has for someone to tell her that they love her just the way she is, dancer or not, successful or not, perfect or imperfect.

Lyrical and tender, Starting from Here is a story of right steps and wrong turns, of coming face to face with the thrills and terrors of girlhood, and of finding our way from wherever we are to wherever we need to go.