Why a Booktrail?
1960s: Turmoil and dysfunctional families in South Dakota (abusive families)
The Distance Home
What you need to know before your trail
In 1960s rural America two siblings grow up in a place of love and turmoil. Rene is the apple of her father’s eye: an over-achiever, athletic, clever, the best brain in class, and the best dancer in school. Her older brother Leon, doted on by his mother, is shy, a stutterer, but also a brilliant dancer.
Rene and Leon share a talent, but it is a gift their father adores in his daughter, and loathes in his son, and that could make all the difference. These two children may be best friends, but life promises to take them down very different paths . . .
Travel Guide
1960s South Dakota
A land of dust and cattle. This is the middle of cattle country and where the prairie land dominates the landscape. People are dotted about the land in ‘post-war’ prairie housing. the one where the family live in the book for example:
A dumpy little cracker box with a lopsided , dilapidated school bus stuck in the barren red muck of the front yard. Inside all the drains were backed up and the hoarded, moldy accumulations of the previous owner were piled to the tops of the windows…”
The landscape
Philip, South Dakota was home to the golden arid, and flatness of the plains -to fields, buttes, ravines all coming to form a single line in the distance; to cold winters, hot summers, and just enough rain for the overdue sun shower to etch out gullies before leaving a rainbow arching overhead.”
This is a story about land, the power of the land, those who have lived there for generations and those who arrive with plans. Families across the ages.
The author herself grew up in Rapid City and herself danced ballet – with the Harkness Ballet in New York
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Distance Home
Destination : South Dakota Author/Guide: Paula Saunders Departure Time: 1960s
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