At six years old, Clara “Spatz” Renke believes her glamorous older sister can do anything.

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Franzi brings the wider world into their conventional postwar German household—foreign visitors, forbidden romances, and the thrilling possibility of escape. To Spatz, her sister is fearless. But Franzi’s flight from their controlling father carries her from Steinberg to Barcelona, London, and Spain, where the freedom she pursued slowly becomes another kind of prison.

 

As Clara grows older, admiration gives way to a more painful understanding. She sees the fear beneath their father’s authority, the danger inside Franzi’s marriage, and the wounds the sisters inflict while trying to protect themselves.

 

Years of resentment eventually harden into sixteen years of silence. Only when Franzi becomes gravely ill do the sisters meet again and confront the question neither has been able to answer: Who abandoned whom?

 

The Distance Between Sisters is a moving literary novel about family estrangement, migration, memory, and reconciliation—and about two sisters who must learn that forgiveness does not erase the past, but may allow love to survive it.