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 Fry Set on the rugged plains of South Dakota, The Distance Home is the story of Rene and Leon, two children who grow up side by side but end up on very different paths. Rene 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

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."