The Distance Home by Paula Saunders was profoundly dysfunctional and sad for me, yet irresistible and well built up. A hard book, because of the upsetting outcomes and cruelty. However, very well written as it follows a family, with well intended individuals, yet, not successful in protecting and building each other up emotionally. Parents exposing their children to a destructive childhood, with long term consequences. Thank you NetGalley for the review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

2.5 stars, rounded up
The Distance Home begins at the end with a death.
“What comes together falls apart. Parties are planned, celebrated, then disperse and dissolve as though they were no more than dreams; seasons come and go like magic tricks, flowers blooming, then fading, snowbanks swelling then melting away. How could it be different for families?” Poetic, mysterious, Saunders’ words evoke dismay. And I kept reading in hope.
The family remains dysfunctional: mostly absent dad, weak, overburdened mom, boy with problems, sister who succeeds at everything, except having friends. Sad foreshadowing – I read on, hope waning.
Sister, Rene, thought of a ‘bottomless pool of hurt. Was she really living under the watchful eye of a tender, loving God, a God of mercy and forgiveness and protection?” …What about her brother, Leon, and the Indians who had their land stolen? ...”Leon was in a fight he didn’t understand, and couldn’t win. Just like the Indians, Leon was overmatched. He was going to lose, and it wasn’t going to be fair or just or right.” I read on, searching for some sort of redemption.
Ballet helps mom, Rene, Leon. Dad doesn’t approve. No one protects odd brother, Leon. Nothing is gained. Evil and meanness shows up more than love. Like the well-drawn characters, I wanted more. The Distance Home delivered a dismal family portrait. I am immensely grateful my life was different.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for granting access to an arc of this book for an honest review.

Perhaps Tolstoy was wrong. Perhaps all unhappy families *are* at their core, alike. The “misery and self-loathing” that René feels as she watches her brother get torn down time after time, his sister Jayne’s inability to stop crying, even though she has everything she ever wanted, parents who don’t know how to parent, and who fight continuously; despite the superficial differences in what causes the pain, these are the sadnesses of a family that is lost.

And yet, for all their failings, the deep heartbeat of this family continues. Saunders tells this story in the present, with brief glimpses of the adult René looking back at her life, and particularly at the last days of her parents. These scenes are particularly evocative for those of us who have sat death-watch with parents. This was a thought, and memory, provoking book.

#TheDistanceHome #NetGalley

A beautiful and heartwarming story about the life at South Dakota. Paula paints rainbows of hope around the up and down of a sweet and particular mid-class family. A good story to read around the fireplace with a good chocolate cup.

This debut novel is part coming of age and part dysfunctional family story…though the dysfunction is much more subtle than the outrageousness you usually find in dysfunctional family novels. It’s not about one outrageous thing that happened within the family…more about a lifetime of small slights stacked on top of each other. Again unlike many dysfunctional family novels, this family has many positive and loving characteristics in addition to the darkness and mistreatment. It’s about children not fitting in at school, parents picking favorites when a child doesn’t match their expectations, children finding excellence in their chosen escape routes, and parents having completely disparate views on the appropriate paths for their children. And, the writing is fantastic…especially for a debut. If you like beautifully written, character-driven novels, Paula Saunders (who is George Saunders’ wife!) might be your best new find. I’ll absolutely be watching what she does next.

This is not a feel-good novel. Not unless, like me, the reader is reminded how lucky she is not to have grown up in a family like this. The writing is fairly good, but I just didn't enjoy the sad story. I give it 3 stars for the writing. It just wasn't for me.

{My Thoughts}
What Worked For Me
Beautiful Writing – Debut author Paula Saunders truly has a way with words. Her phrasing often came across as lyrical even in the midst of a gritty story; plus, her use of similes was textbook perfect.

“What comes together falls apart. Parties are planned, celebrated, then disperse and dissolve as though they were no more than dreams; seasons come and go like magic tricks, flowers blooming then fading, snowbanks swelling then melting away. How could it be different for families?”

“As far back as René could remember, it seemed like she’d been riding a stormy, disordered team of horses – Eve and Al, Leon and Jayne, school and ballet – standing astride as many saddles as her legs could manage, clutching a fistful of tangled reins, balancing in jerks and starts like an untrained circus performer.”

René – Though The Distance Home is the story of an entire family, it is fully told from René’s perspective and I found her to be a very relatable, if not always likeable, character.

René was a keen observer of the world around her, and not just her own family.
A child born into dysfunction René developed startlingly wise insights into the behaviors of others, as well as herself.
Not yet a teen, René witnessed a horrific family event, and blamed not the perpetrator, but the silent witness. I loved how René’s conflicted feelings served to dramatically shift the trajectory of her life.

“And as René sat in her bed that night, looking across the hall at Leon’s closed bedroom door, she couldn’t help but wonder where all the hurt and anger went after something like that. Did it just disappear, as a person grew older, dissolving in a mist of resignation and forgetfulness?”

As René grew older, her family relationships grew more and more complex with only a fine line between love and hate, condemnation and forgiveness. Saunders did a commendable job having René walk that line in ways that felt very real.

“Now get yourself something to eat and go straight to bed.” And René leaned in for a hug that felt mainly like a metal restraining device closing in around her.”

Ballet in South Dakota – I don’t want to offend anyone from South Dakota, but ballet just isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I think of a small town in The Mount Rushmore State. Yet, ballet played a huge role in The Distance Home. Leon, René’s older brother, was the first to start in ballet in the hunt to find a place for him to succeed. And, succeed he did. He was soon joined by René, later by younger sister, Jayne and finally even their mother, Eve. Ballet became a huge part of their lives, very nearly taking over. It was an escape that offered freedom and a sense of normalcy sadly missing from their lives. But, for Leon especially, it came with very high costs. René watched Leon’s demise as her own status rose.

What Didn’t
Uncomfortable Attitudes – This isn’t exactly something that didn’t work, in fact it was key to the story, but it made me uncomfortable and may be a trigger to some. A factor of the times, both Al and Eve had very harsh things to say about their Native American neighbors. Prejudice wrapped in fiction doesn’t typically bother me, but here I squirmed.

Bible Verses & Mythology – The author used both at different times as a means to explain what René thought and felt. I thought they were overdone.

{The Final Assessment}
For me The Distance Home was the best sort of dysfunctional family story. Harsh at times, it was a slow building saga of a family trying, and trying again, and trying again. Poor, cruel, unkind choices pulled René’s family apart over and over again, and still under all the drama, all the raw emotion love never quite let go. Grade: B+

Note: I received a copy of this book from Random House (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review. Many thanks!

This family saga was engaging and well written. I loved that it was set in post World War II South Dakota. The characters were flawed, but each had redeeming qualities that made the reader feel for them.

Family sagas and the complex relationships between family members in all their different permutations are an area of fiction I enjoy reading. However, I struggled with Paula Saunders’ debut novel “The Distance Home.” The characters seemed to lack depth and the events that occurred in their lives, particularly to Leon, were heart wrenching and disturbing to read about. It was difficult for me to determine what some of the characters motivations were, much less understand them. I certainly don’t expect books about family relationships to be all sunshine and happiness, but this book did not resonate with me for the above reasons, and it would not be a book I would recommend. (But please read other reviews before making your decision!) Ms. Saunders definitely shows promise as a novelist and I will be watching for her next book.

My review was posted on Goodreads on 8/5/16/18.

4 family saga stars to The Distance Home!

I am drawn to family sagas, and I never tire of them. The dynamics and character analysis always have great potential. The Distance Home is a moving story of family set in 1960s rural South Dakota.

I was struck first by the atmospheric setting: cattle farms and the natural beauty of the west in South Dakota in contrast with the grittier aspects of this family’s home life. Included in the family of five are the mother, father, older son, and two daughters.

The parents each have their preferred child as family dynamics sometimes predict. The difference is that the preferences result in psychological turmoil. The son wants to be a ballet dancer, and the father wants no part in that, while he is pleased one of his daughters is a dancer. The mother is more protective of the son in response and is harsh and critical towards one of the daughters. Both children are deeply affected by the treatment of their parents, positive and negative, and develop negative coping strategies to escape.

Paula Saunders writes beautifully, and the characters are fully-developed, except for the youngest daughter. She is present in the book, but did not add or detract from it. The Distance Home revolves around the day-to-day life of this family at a time when gender roles and American culture were drastically changing. There is a somber tone within these pages without the book being heavily emotional.

Overall, The Distance Home is a story about what could be anyone’s family. It is at times funny while equally tragic, and although there is intense tumult in this family, there is also love, and in striking that shifty, shaky balance, there is honesty in this portrayal.

Thank you to Random House for the complimentary copy. My opinions are my own.

I didn't see any point to this story. I didn't care for at of the characters, one of them were likeable, I liked the setting of South Dakota, but other than that, I just didn't care for this book. It was flat and unappealing,

Genre: General Fiction
Publisher: Random House
Pub. Date: August 7, 2018

What a mistake I made with this one. I read that the author is Paula Saunders and silly me only registered the first name. I accepted this ARC thinking I was going to read a new Paula McLain novel, an author that I admire. It just took me a few paragraphs to realize my mistake. I’d say that I made a beginner reviewer’s mistake, but unfortunately, I am not a beginner anymore in this craft. Live and learn.

The novel’s setting is in the 1960s, we meet two sisters attending their father’s funeral. They are the surviving members of a Midwestern family of five—mother, father, older brother, older, and younger sisters. Do not expect to like the parents. They infuse so much psychological damage in their older two children that later in their offspring’s lives they are diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress. In a nutshell, the father has no tolerance or love for his son, probably because he is interested in becoming a ballet dancer. Though, he very much enjoys that his elder daughter also loves to dance. Because the father is so uncaring about his son and shines towards his elder daughter, the mother goes in the opposite direction. Her allegiance is to the son, while she is extremely critical of the elder daughter. The youngest daughter barely shows up in the plot. I am not sure at all why she was added into the novel.

I’m a reviewer that doesn’t need to like the characters to enjoy the story. That is not my issue with this novel. I simply found the whole story flat and the characters too one-sided. The only part of the tale that kept my interest is that the story-line goes back and forth in time, without any advance warning. In one paragraph, you will be reading about the young teenage son pulling out his eyebrows and eyelashes, and in the next paragraph, you will get a glimpse into the future while he is in addiction rehab. It is there that he learns that he is bipolar; a condition that went untreated his whole life. While the teenage son is clearly not doing well, the older sister becomes an anorexic overachiever. It appears to her parents that the older sister is doing just fine but the reader knows better. The entire plot revolves around the family’s day to day warped dynamics. The author hints at the idea that the parents simply didn’t know any better. The old saying that “they did the best they could” is applied to them. This seems to be the reason that the elder sister came to forgive them both before they died. But I will be damned if I know why.


I

Paula Saunders' debut novel The Distance Home shows a hell of a lot of promise: beautiful prose, fleshed out characters. But the story felt rehashed somehow and I found it hard to connect with it. That being said, there were enough enjoyable moments in this family drama to recommend.