Paula Herman, 11 years old going on 12, dyes her hair bright carrot orange. She was trying for blonde, her mother's colour, but she missed.

Paula always thought it strange she looked so little like her mother. The summer that they moved from Toronto to Edmonton things got stranger still. There Paula s starts to unravel the mystery of her past and things get complicated. Why does her mother refuse to talk about the past? What has happened to the handsome man in the photograph they find there--the man she knows must be her father? Why is his name Popowich while hers is Herman? The deeper Paula digs into the mystery, the more tangled her life becomes--until running away seems her only solution. But it's a solution that only causes more problems.

My Name is Paula Popowich is a touching story about a girl who must come to terms with her complex and troubled background.