When Paula first met James, she was 26, in graduate school, and not ready to be any kind of mother to his two young sons. But, years later, after caring for them and watching them grow, she finds herself unsure of what to do when her relationship with their father ends. In a collection of striking flash essays, Paula reveals the complexity of loving children who are not her own and attempts to put language to something we have no language to describe. No Relation is a deeply personal, beautifully rendered account of a seldom-remarked on kind of love and loss. The book was shortlisted for the Stanford Libraries William Saroyan International Prize.