‘Everything was too painful for Leon; he seemed too tender to be alive.” His sister René, however, is ambitious, resilient and destined to escape. Set in 1960s rural America, Paula Saunders’s debut novel, The Distance Home, shows how two siblings, both with a gift for dancing, are set on paths of self-destruction and success by their parents. In a moving postscript, Saunders explains that the novel is based on her own troubled family history growing up in South Dakota. Today she lives in California and is married to the Booker prize-winning novelist George Saunders.

Why did you choose to write your story as a novel rather than as a straightforward memoir?
I found that giving myself some distance from the characters – who are, of course, based on the people in my family – allowed me to create situations and circumstances for them and explore their lives in ways I could never have felt comfortable doing in a memoir. Plus, by shaping the character of René (whose experience mirrors my own) and seeing her as separate from myself, I felt less guarded and more able to look into her motivations and feelings with empathy instead of blame. I did initially write the novel in first person from René’s point of view, but changing to third person was a critical step in my ability to understand these characters.

You write that you needed to be able to see your childhood from ‘a perspective less tainted by personal pain and judgment and blame’. How did it feel to revisit the past after all these years?
First, it seems to me that the attempt to write honestly about people in your life who have been challenging for you forces you to try to understand what might have contributed to different aspects of their character, or what might have allowed for a certain situation to develop. The process automatically opens up some kind of deeper empathy for them as individuals.
Second, I think meditation practice helped me to calm down and stop blaming the people who appeared to be responsible for all the problems. It helped me to see that circumstances are not as solid as we might think, and that situations and relationships can be penetrated and changed through love and understanding.

This is an incredibly assured first novel. What took you so long?
I always thought I’d be able to be a wife, a mother, and write books. Sounds easy enough, right? When our children were small, we had no money and no family nearby. There was a lot of work to do and not much room to pursue artistic ambitions. Though I did endeavor to continue writing during those years – turning to poetry because I felt I could go in and out of it more easily than prose – it took everything I had to try to create a family that I actually wanted to be a part of. Also, because the novel was based on my own experiences growing up, there was a lot to process in finding a path between my anger and the love I felt for everyone involved.

Were any writers or books particularly influential?
I have always been fascinated by myths and fairytales, and I think The Distance Home has a strong element of both. The setup – a daughter idolised, a son reviled – seems reminiscent of a fairytale. Plus, reading Elena Ferrante was critical: her work seemed to grant me permission to write about my own dark and troubled family relationships, to see the exploration of our smaller, daily interactions and how they affect each of us, as valuable and worthwhile.

As a family epic, the novel reminds me of both Anne Tyler and Jonathan Franzen. Were you conscious of writing in an American tradition?
To me, this is a completely American story, especially because it’s a story of division – of the haves and have-nots, the accepted and rejected. It seems that here, in America, we need to constantly identify an outsider, a threat. Where there isn’t a natural enemy – or an evident other – we tend to create one to fulfil some requirement of our psyche and complete our expectations of the world. So this book – the story of one child preferred and one rejected – seems to hold a mirror to that larger psychology and to locate the beginning of that repeated pattern of division in the family. We might see in this book’s family, as in our own, the immensely destructive power of our western ideas of winning and losing, success and failure.

There are several mentions of tensions and prejudices living alongside the Native American population. Was this something you were very conscious of as a child?
Yes, there was an air of mild and continual racism in our house that I was always very aware of. Most of us now are attuned to the histories of oppressed peoples and the horrors we, as the dominant race, have inflicted and are inflicting on the disenfranchised. But when I was a child, there seemed to be the seeds of racist thought in the everyday language and attitudes, both at home and outside of it. My feeling is that the small, continual violences in our family and the lazy, casual racism pervading both our home and the culture at large emanated from the same source – from a need to identify an enemy, and a fear of losing whatever power and position one might have managed to secure.

I was particularly affected by the spitefulness with which the other girls treat René at school, just for daring to be different and ambitious. I’m guessing this comes from first-hand experience?
Yes. I think that when you grow up in a culture that values winning and success, your peers are not going to be so pleased to see you excel. Winning and losing is a zero-sum game. When someone starts to rise, it’s a rational act of self-preservation for others to try to bring her down, because we all know the cost of being at the bottom. So to secure our place, we have to do battle with each other. This seems to be a lesson we learn very early on.

And, sorry, but I’ve got to ask: how does it feel to be publishing your debut as the wife of one of America’s most acclaimed writers?
I’m so happy for George’s success. I was one of his first fans – before he’d published more than a story or two in little magazines – and I’ve always adored his work. So I’m pleased and proud to now have my book next to his on the shelf.

George’s essay What Writers Really Do When They Write, about how he finally came to write Lincoln in the Bardo, has become a creed for aspiring writers. How would you describe your own writing process?
My first principle is: sit down! Sit down, sit down, sit down! After that, I have to remember to be quiet and listen. And revising is my only way forward. Only by trying one more time, again and again, can I begin to approach a thought, idea, image or bit of language I might have in mind in some vague, preconceptual way. Thankfully, I love to revise, mainly because it’s such an open process, with no right or wrong, only the guiding instincts of my own taste and aesthetic inclinations. I’m a rewriter.

Which books are on your bedside table?
Jonathan Franzen’s The End of the End of the Earth – which I’m captivated by. George Eliot’s Middlemarch – which I’ve been meaning to reread for the longest time. Flannery O’Connor’s Complete Stories – because, just, aah. Our Pristine Mind by Orgyen Chowang – an inspiring book on meditation practice.

Which books or authors do you always return to?
Willa Cather, Jean Rhys, Tolstoy, Toni Morrison.

Which book would you give to a young person?
John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony along with The Pearl.

Do you prefer to read on paper or a screen?
I always read on paper. There’s something about the feel of a book that I just love.

• The Distance Home by Paula Saunders is published by Picador (£14.99). To order a copy for £10.99 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99