Paula Saunders – författare

Focusing on everyday rituals, the essays in this volume look at spheres of social action and the places throughout the Atlantic world where African–descended communities have expressed their values, ideas, beliefs, and spirituality in material terms. The contributors trace the impact of encounters with the Atlantic world on African cultural formation, how entanglement with commerce, commodification, and enslavement and with colonialism, emancipation, and self-rule manifested itself in the shaping of ritual acts such as those associated with birth, death, healing, and protection. Taken as a whole, the book offers new perspectives on what the materials of rituals can tell us about the intimate processes of cultural transformation and the dynamics of the human condition.

A "riveting family saga" (Mary Karr) set in the American West, about sibling rivalry, dark secrets, and a young girl''s struggle with freedom and artistic desire.This moving debut novel is a profoundly American story. Set in a circa-1960s rural South Dakota--a hardscrabble place of cattle buyers, homegrown ballet studios, casual drug abuse, and unmitigated pressure to conform, all amid the great natural beauty of the region--the book portrays a loving but struggling young family in turmoil, and two siblings, Rene and Leon, who opt for different but equally extreme means of escaping the burdens of home. By turns funny and tragic, lyrical and terse, Paula Saunders'' debut examines the classic American questions: What is to become of the vulnerable in a culture of striving and power? And what is the effect of this striving and power on both those who dominate and those who are overrun? It is an affecting novel, in which the author''s compassionate narration allows us to sympathize, in turn, with everyone involved.

Must a child's past define their future?'Stark and beautiful . . . I haven’t read anything this good in a long time' – Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold FrySet on the rugged plains of South Dakota, The Distance Home is the story of René and Leon, two children who grow up side by side but end up on very different paths. René is clever, athletic, aggressive, a go-getter, the apple of her father's eye; while Leon is shy, tender-hearted, a stutterer, constantly struggling for acknowledgement. They both possess a talent for dance, but it is a gift their father adores in his daughter and loathes in his son.A heartbreaking saga of familiar turmoil, a child's desire for acceptance, and the ways in which our parents shape the adults we become, Paula Saunders' The Distance Home is a breathtaking new examination of the American dream and the eternal question of how any of us can finally be free.'A heartfelt tale of brutal parental love' The Times