The distance home : a novel

Resource Information

The work The distance home : a novel represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Manchester City Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The distance home : a novel

Title remainder

a novel

Statement of responsibility

Paula Saunders

Creator

• Saunders, Paula, 1957-

Author

• Saunders, Paula, 1957-

Subject

• Domestic fiction
• Families
• Families -- Fiction
• Father and child -- Fiction
• Fiction
• Brothers and sisters -- Fiction
• Novels
• Novels
• Domestic fiction

Genre

• Novels
• Fiction
• Domestic fiction

Language

eng

Summary

In the years after World War II, the bleak yet beautiful plains of South Dakota still embody all the contradictions--the ruggedness and the promise--of the old frontier. This is a place where you can eat strawberries from wild vines, where lightning reveals a boundless horizon, where descendants of white settlers and native Indians continue to collide; and where, for most, there are limited options. Rene shares a home, a family, and a passion for dance with her older brother, Leon. Yet for all they have in common, their lives are on remarkably different paths. In contrast to Rene, a born spitfire, Leon is a gentle soul. The only boy in their ballet class, Leon silently endures often brutal teasing. Meanwhile, Rene excels at everything she touches, basking in the delighted gaze of their father, whom Leon seems to disappoint no matter how hard he tries. As the years pass, Rene and Leon's parents fight with increasing frequency--and ferocity. Their father--a cattle broker--spends more time on the road, his sporadic homecomings both yearned for and dreaded by the children. And as Rene and Leon grow up, they grow apart. They grasp whatever they can to stay afloat--a word of praise, a grandmother's outstretched hand, the seductive attention of a stranger--as Rene works to save herself, crossing the border into a larger, more hopeful world, while Leon embarks on a path of despair and self-destruction. Tender, searing, and unforgettable, The Distance Home is a profoundly American story spanning decades--a tale of haves and have-nots, of how our ideas of winning and losing, success and failure, lead us inevitably into various problems with empathy and caring for one another

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

813/.6

Index

no index present

LC call number

PS3619.A8249

LC item number

D57 2018

Literary form

fiction