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The Distancers: Book summary and reviews of The Distancers by Lee Sandlin

The Distancers

An American Memoir

by Lee Sandlin

The Distancers by Lee Sandlin X
The Distancers by Lee Sandlin
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  • Published Aug 2013
    224 pages
    Genre: Literary Fiction

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Book Summary

In The Distancers, seven generations worth of joy and heartache is artfully forged into a family portrait that is at once universally American yet singularly Lee Sandlin's own. From the nineteenth century German immigrants who settled on a small Midwestern farm, to the proud and upright aunts and uncles with whom Sandlin spent the summers of his youth, a whole history of quiet ambition and stoic pride--of successes, failures, and above all endurance--leaps off the page in a sweeping American family epic.

Touching on The Great Depression, WWII, and the American immigrant experience, the uses of proper manners, The Distancers is a beautiful and stark Midwestern drama, about a time and place long since vanished, where the author learned the value of family and the art of keeping one's distance.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"In a synthesis of family lore and popular culture, Sandlin expands his genealogy of a conventional family into something considerably more." - Kirkus

This information about The Distancers was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Lee Sandlin

Lee Sandlin is the author of Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild and reviews books for The Wall Street Journal. His essay "Losing the War" was included in the anthology The New Kings of Nonfiction. He lives in Chicago.

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