The series was created by Alan Ball and is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries by author Charlaine Harris.

At the age of 19, while traveling at night to see a friend's cousin with whom she had a romantic relationship, she encounters the vampire Eric Northman.

Pam is described as round-faced with a chalky pale complexion, with dark blue eyes and straight blond hair "white as a magnolia petal".

She claims that she was quite happy to be turned into a vampire; Pam maintains that she would have grown into a bitter and ultimately cruel person due to the limited opportunities available to human women in the Victorian era.

Later in the book series, it is revealed that Eric asked Pam to leave Minnesota and move to Louisiana to help him run the bar.

When Eric experiences memory loss, Pam takes a more prominent role in the plot of the fourth novel (Dead to the World).

After Eric marries the Queen of Oklahoma, Freyda, Pam becomes the new vampire sheriff of area 5 in Louisiana (Dead Ever After).

In "Authority Always Wins", an episode from the fifth season, Pam experiences flashbacks to 1905 when she worked as the madam of a brothel.

In the fifth season of the television series, Pam is described as a madam during her human life in a Barbary Coast (San Francisco) brothel in 1905.

When Eric, her maker, releases his progeny from their blood bond, it enables Pam to follow her own free choosing and will.

In the final season, Pam and Eric get rich from the cure for "Hep V": a fatal virus genetically engineered by the human government to exterminate vampires.