The distance between us

the long version

Valerie Sayers' seductive humor and compassionate understanding of human foribles have earned her comparisions to Flannery O'Connor, Reynolds Price, and May Gordon. With each successive novel, Sayers' spirited prose has flourished, creating rich and wholly believable residents of Due East, her fictional town which the Washington Post praises as "acquiring a mythology all its own: Yoknapatawph-by-the-Sea." In The Distance Between Us, an unlikely pair of young sweethearts erects the shaky legs of a triangle to begin Sayers' most passionate and expansive novel to date. Franny Starkey is a skinny, pale artist who, as a child in South Carolina, "wandered along behind the rest of her siblings like an orphan who'd been taken into the wrong family and didn't want any part of them". She smokes grass, wears Indian-cotton skirts bought cheap in New Orleans, and falls in love as often as possible. Steward Morehouse is an obedient trustfund kid doted upon by Old South grandparents and a flighty, gypsy-haired mother. Together, or miles apart, Franny and Steward are bonded for life by their grand passion, and the inescapable longing to for the lowlands of Due East. In Valerie Sayers' infinitely talented hands, Franny and Steward venture to New York City, Washington, D.C., and Ireland, proving that the past is, in itself, a home to be cherished. And like the appeal of a colorful coastal town, or a schoolkid's first love, it cannot be ignored.