Lee Sandlin‘s new book will read familiar to those of us who grew up in the company of a reliable midwestern archetype: the taciturn, emotionally remote grandparent. Here there’s a quartet not of Sandlin’s actual grandparents but his great uncles and aunts, two of each, and they live together in a house in Edwardsville, Illinois, where Sandlin (Wicked River, Storm Kings) visits them as a child. Originally published as a 12-part series in the Reader, and since revised and expanded, The Distancers pieces together a short history of the Sehnert family—Sandlin’s mother’s side—focusing mainly on these four: two sisters, Helen and Hilda, and their brother Eugene; and Hilda’s unlikable husband, Marty, who endlessly needles his fellow diners at Sunday supper. “It wasn’t long before Hilda was the only one there who could stand him. Agnes was suspicious of him, Helen loathed him, and other guests grew sick to death of him,” Sandlin writes. “But nobody ever dreamed of telling him he wasn’t welcome.” Later in the book Eugene punches Marty, and never acknowledges him again.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
By Lee Sandlin (Vintage Books)
