Told in alternating teen voices across three generations, You Bring the Distant Near explores sisterhood, first loves, friendship, and the inheritance of culture-for better or worse. Fans of Nicola Yoon's The Sun Is Also a Star will find a lot to love in this literary tour de force. From a grandmother worried that her children are losing their Indian identity to a daughter wrapped up in a forbidden biracial love affair to a granddaughter social-activist fighting to preserve Bengali tigers, Perkins weaves together the threads of a family growing into an American identity. Here is a sweeping story of five women at once intimately relatable and yet entirely new.

 

 

This book has been graded for interest at 12 years.

There are 320 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 2017 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc .

Mitali Perkins was born in Kolkata. Her family soon left India, living in Ghana, Cameroon, England and Mexico before emigrating to the United States. They eventually settled in California. Mitali studied political science at Stanford University and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. She is married to the Reverend Robert K. Perkins II and has twin sons. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts.