I Refuse
Per Petterson, 2012; English trans., 2015
Graywolf Press
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781555976996
Summary
Per Petterson's hotly anticipated new novel, I Refuse, is the work of an internationally acclaimed novelist at the height of his powers.
In his signature spare style, Petterson weaves a tale of two men whose accidental meeting one morning recalls their boyhood thirty-five years ago. Back then, Tommy was separated from his sisters after he stood up to their abusive father. Jim was by Tommy's side through it all.
But one winter night, a chance event on a frozen lake forever changed the balance of their friendship. Now Jim fishes alone on a bridge as Tommy drives by in a new Mercedes, and it's clear their fortunes have reversed.
Over the course of the day, the life of each man will be irrevocably altered. I Refuse is a powerful, unforgettable novel, and its publication is an event to be celebrated. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July18, 1952
• Where—Oslo, Norway
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Norwegian Critics prize for Literature; Booksellers Best Book of the Year
Award; Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
• Currently—lives in Oslo, Norwary
Per Petterson is a prize-winning Norwegian novelist. His debut was Aske i munnen, sand i skoa (1987), a collection of short stories.
He has since published five novels to good reviews. Til Sibir (To Siberia, 1996; nominated for The Nordic Council's Literature Prize), a novel set in the Second World War, was published in English in 1998. His novel I kjølvannet, (In the Wake, 2002), is a young man's story of losing his family in the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster in 1990.
Petterson's breakthrough, however, was Ut og stjæle hester (Out Stealing Horses, 2003). The novel received two top literary prizes in Norway—the The Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Booksellers’ Best Book of the Year Award. The 2005 English language translation was awarded the 2006 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (the world's largest monetary literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English (€100,000). In the December 9. 2007 issue of the New York Times Book Review Out Stealing Horses was named one of the 10 best books of the year.
Out Stealing Horses has double meanings and two sets of twins. When asked “How did the Nazi Occupation of Norway translate into the plot of your novel?” Mr. Petterson responded:
Well, like I said, I do not plan, so that double meaning came up when I needed it. That is disappointing to some readers, I know. But for me it shows the strength of art. It is like carving out a sculpture from some material. You have to go with the quality of the material and not force upon it a form that it will not yield to anyway. That will only look awkward. Early in the book, in the 1948 part, I let the two fathers (of my main characters, Jon and Trond) have a problem with looking at each other. And I wondered, why is that? So I thought, well, it’s 1948, only three years after the Germans left Norway. It has to be something with the war. And then I thought, shit, I have to write about the war. You see, I hate research.
In 2012 Petterson published his ninth work of fiction, I Refuse, in Norway; the novel quickly became a best seller. By the time of its U.S. printing in 2015, rights had been sold to 16 countries.
Petterson is a trained librarian. He has worked as a bookstore clerk, translator and literary critic before becoming a full-time writer. He cites Knut Hamsun and Raymond Carver among his influences. All told, his works have been translated into nearly 50 languages. (Adated from Wikipedia. First retrieved in 2008.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) This...might be [Pettersen's] saddest, most powerful take yet on families torn asunder, missed opportunities, lost friendships, and regrets that span a lifetime.... [A] brilliant, meditative story about how one small, impulsive act can have an irrevocable impact upon one’s life, as well as a rippling effect upon the lives of others.
Publishers Weekly
[T]wo men meet by accident after a dark incident on a frozen lake 35 years previously shattered their relationship. Then, Jim stood by troubled Tommy; now, Tommy drives a Mercedes, while Jim fishes alone. From the author of Out Stealing Horses, an International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Norwegian Petterson shows his considerable gift for exploring the darker crevices of boyhood in this elegiac story.... [Two now] middle-aged men are drawn back to memories of [an] earlier time.... Don't expect redemption here, but hope for connection. Without pyrotechnics, Petterson brings his characters and working-class Norway vividly, even passionately, to life.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Hausfrau
Jill Alexander Essbaum, 2015
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812997538
Summary
Anna was a good wife, mostly. For readers of The Girl on the Train and The Woman Upstairs comes a striking debut novel of marriage, fidelity, sex, and morality, featuring a fascinating heroine who struggles to live a life with meaning—"a modern-day Anna Karenina tale."*
Anna Benz, an American in her late thirties, lives with her Swiss husband, Bruno—a banker—and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich. Though she leads a comfortable, well-appointed life, Anna is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with the emotionally unavailable Bruno or even with her own thoughts and feelings, Anna tries to rouse herself with new experiences: German language classes, Jungian analysis, and a series of sexual affairs she enters with an ease that surprises even her.
But Anna can’t easily extract herself from these affairs. When she wants to end them, she finds it’s difficult. Tensions escalate, and her lies start to spin out of control. Having crossed a moral threshold, Anna will discover where a woman goes when there is no going back.
Intimate, intense, and written with the precision of a Swiss Army knife, Jill Alexander Essbaum’s debut novel is an unforgettable story of marriage, fidelity, sex, morality, and most especially self. Navigating the lines between lust and love, guilt and shame, excuses and reasons, Anna Benz is an electrifying heroine whose passions and choices readers will debate with recognition and fury. Her story reveals, with honesty and great beauty, how we create ourselves and how we lose ourselves and the sometimes disastrous choices we make to find ourselve. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Where—Bay City, Texas, USA
• Education—University of Texas; University of Houston
• Awards—Bakeless Poetry Prize
• Currently—lives in Austin, Texas
Jill Alexander Essbaum is the author of several collections of poetry and her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, as well as its sister anthology, The Best American Erotic Poems, 1800-Present. She is the winner of the Bakeless Poetry Prize and recipient of two NEA literature fellowships. A member of the core faculty at the University of California, Riverside’s Palm Desert Low-Residency MFA program, she lives and writes in Austin, Texas. (From the publisehr .)
Read more about the author on the Poetry Foundation Website.
Book Reviews
Hausfrau...seems positioned to ride a wave of comparisons to the erotic stylings of E. L. James....[but] the two are very different. Ms. Essbaum has far more sophistication, but she tethers it to the tale of a morose, insufferable American narcissist who is bored by her Swiss husband.... But Ms. Essbaum hasn’t got much of a plot in mind either, so the book meanders from sexual liaisons—which quickly develop a perfunctory sameness and have nothing like the superlucrative kinks of Ms. James’s books—to psychoanalysis appointments to those dreadful moments when Anna has time to slow down and contemplate herself.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Madame Bovary meets Fifty Shades of Grey.
Sunday Express (UK)
There is much to admire in Essbaum's intricately constructed, meticulously composed novel, including its virtuosic intercutting of past and present. It is equally impressive that Essbaum is able to retain our sympathy, if just barely, for her lost and self-involved protagonist—at least until the novel's heavily foreshadowed, but still startling, conclusion.
Julia M. Klein - Chicago Tribune
We’re in literary territory as familiar as Anna’s name, but Essbaum makes it fresh with sharp prose and psychological insight.
San Francisco Chronicle
For a first novelist, Essbaum is extraordinary because she is a poet. Her language is meticulous and resonant and daring.
NPR’s Weekend Edition
A powerful, lyrical novel.... Hausfrau boasts taut pacing and melodrama, but also a fully realized heroine as love-hateable as Emma Bovary and a poet’s fascination with language.
Huffington Post
[Hausfrau] feels more contemporary, subjective, and just plain funny than classical bourgeois ennui. Imagine Tom Perrotta’s American nowheresvilles swapped out for a tidy Zürich suburb, sprinkled liberally with sharp riffs on Swiss-German grammar and European hypocrisy.
New York Magazine
Brain-surgically constructed to fascinate you, entertain you, and then make you question what a life lived with meaning looks like—all with a sense of poetic discipline and introspection.
Los Angeles Magazine
(Starred review.) Over a century after the publication of Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, poet Essbaum proves in her debut novel that there is still plenty of psychic territory to cover in the story of "a good wife, mostly."... The realism of Anna’s dilemmas and the precise construction of the novel are marvels of the form.... This novel is masterly as it moves toward its own inescapable ending, and Anna is likely to provoke strong feelings in readers well after the final page.
Publishers Weekly
An American in her thirties, Anna Benz has a picture-perfect life, with glowing children, a gorgeous house, and a Swiss banker husband. Of course, what looks that good on the outside is often rotten on the inside, and Anna launches a series of affairs. This debut by a recipient of the Bakeless Poetry Prize and two NEA literature fellowships is an in-house favorite
Library Journal
[Essbaum’s protagonist] shares more than her name with that classic adulteress, Anna Karenina, but Essbaum has given a deft, modern facelift to the timeless story of a troubled marriage and tragic love in this seductive first novel.
Booklist
Between caring for three children, visiting a Jungian analyst and taking a German class, Anna wouldn't seem to have much time for extramarital liaisons, but like her namesake, Madame Karenina, she manages.... There's plenty of tension—will Anna get caught?—but it's hard to be invested in the life of a woman who doesn't care much about it herself. A smart book that entertains page by page but doesn't add up to anything larger.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. That Anna. So—really—what’s her deal? Her thoughts loop on a script of immutable passivity, but is that her whole story? From the onset we know she is a flawed protagonist, a damaged character, a woman who is "nothing but a series of poor choices executed poorly." Taking into account Anna’s personal history, her psychic and spiritual makeup, and those aforementioned poor choices, is there any part of this tragedy that somehow isn’t her fault? What should she be held accountable for? Of what, if anything, are you willing to absolve her?
2. Bruno proposes to Anna with the words "I think you would make a good wife for me." What, in your opinion, would make him think that? They’ve been together for over a decade. By book’s end it’s clear that Bruno has either known about or suspected Anna’s infidelities the entire time. Why would he tolerate them? Why would he tolerate her? Is this a sign of his weakness or his strength? What does he "get" out of this marriage?
3. Mary, in her decency, stands in direct opposition to the self-centered narcissism of the majority of Anna’s actions. Simply put, Mary seems to be everything that Anna should be but isn’t. But the book suggests that Mary’s two-shoes aren’t altogether goody, so to speak. In three separate instances, she "spills" herself in front of Anna: when she drops her purse and blurts out a more-Anna-than-Mary expletive, when she drops her purse and the erotic novel (and the wistful truth that she regrets not exploring her sexuality) tumbles out, and, finally, when she admits to the bullying and setting the fire. In these ways, Mary has more in common with Anna than Anna is open to recognizing. Do you think Mary can see past Anna’s façade? Do you think she understands Anna on a fundamental level? If not, then do you think she would ever be able to? What do you think will happen to Mary after the book ends?
4. Anna’s lack of morality is almost shocking. What do you think is her gravest mistake? Is there any point during the course of the narrative where she could have stopped the progression of events?
5. Anna rarely tells Doktor Messerli the whole truth. Why, then, do you think she continues the analysis?
6. Anna has never learned to speak German, and yet she exhibits an unmistakable talent for language: she plays with words, turns puns, thinks in entendre—though rarely does she speak these things aloud. Is it shyness that prevents her from showing this side of herself? Fear? What would it look like if Anna could tap into her "voice"? What would it change?
7. Of all the children, Charles is the most dear to Anna. Victor is too much like Bruno for Anna to fully trust. But as the sole memento of the relationship with Stephen, one might assume that Polly Jean would hold the spot closest to Anna’s heart. Discuss Anna’s relationship with her children. She won’t win mother of the year in anyone’s contest—but is there any way in which she can be commended? Is there anything she does as a mother that is correct? Good? Nurturing?
8. Anna confesses she majored in home economics in college. Couple this with the perfect memory of sewing with her mother, and the seed of Anna’s present psychology begins to form. As her station as a wife and a mother starts to fail her (or rather, she, them), we are able to understand that somewhere in Anna’s fundamental self she was raised to be these things. Why does she cling to this fantasy if it doesn’t seem to suit her?
9. At the end of chapter 6, Anna thinks, "I wish I’d never met the man." Which man do you suppose she means?
10. Doktor Messerli warns Anna that "consciousness doesn’t come with an automatic ethic," and Anna’s choices seem to bear this out. Taking into consideration Doktor Messerli’s explanation of the Shadow, her story of the Teufelsbrücke, and the final events of the book, is it possible to argue that, ethics aside, Anna has come into complete consciousness?
11. Archie says to Anna that a man can smell a woman’s sadness. In the same vein, Anna talks herself through the morning after the physical confrontation with Bruno with a "You had this coming" speech to herself ("I provoked this.... I brought this to myself."). By this reasoning, Anna is an active participant in her own downfall. But Anna claims to be almost entirely passive. Do you consider Anna to be more passive or more active? How does this complicate your understanding of Anna’s psychology?
12. In terms of the structure of the novel, the analytic sessions with Doktor Messerli serve to explicate, illuminate, underscore, and complicate the plot of the book and any conclusion that Anna believes she’s arrived at. Are there any places in the book where this is particularly meaningful to you?
13. There’s an intriguing symmetry to the way that the grammar of the German language—the tenses, moods, conjugations, false cognates, infinitives, et cetera—lays itself out in a pattern that easily overlays the poignant heartbreak of the novel. And yet, one of the themes of Hausfrau is language’s ultimate inadequacy. Is that tension resolvable? If so, how? Is this something you have encountered in your own life?
14. The book depends upon the coolness of the Swiss, the impenetrable nature of the landscape, and the solitude of nighttime in order to fully call forth Anna’s deep despair and alienation. Could this book take place in another setting? Anna’s everyday environs—the hill, the bench, the trains, the Coop—become characters in their own right Are there other functions the novel’s setting serves?
15. Hausfrau is in some sense a study in female sexuality. What might the author be suggesting about the sexual appetites of a woman at midlife? What might the author be suggesting about a woman’s emotional needs?
16. An entirely speculative question: What do you think will happen to Bruno and Victor and Polly Jean? Can you imagine their lives post-Anna?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Sahara
Angella Ricot, 2014
Authorhouse
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781496924155
Summary
When three sisters overhear their father's overwhelming deal to sell them into prostitution, they immediately take fate into their own hands in search of their own destiny.
They embark on a powerful and compelling journey that takes root in the exotic realm of the Caribbean island of Labadee, later to spring fully fledged in the glamorous cosmopolitan city of New York. Out of the struggle emerges the valiant and beautiful heroine, Sahara, a sensational gold thief who gets herself entangled in sensuous political games and dangerous liaisons.
Sahara is a story of love, lust, money, and betrayal that is ingrained with power, politics, and prejudice. The plot spins to a volatile climax that sets the stage for the ultimate scandal in the White House. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Port-au-Prince, Haiti
• Education—B.A., University of South Florida
• Awards—Iliad Press, Cader Publishing
• Currently—lives in New York, NY
Born in Haiti, award-winning author Angella Ricot immigrated to the United States over twenty years ago. A graduate of the University of South Florida, she was trained in both psychology and the medical sciences. She has appeared in the Miami Times and in the New York Caribbean newspapers. Her first book, Mirror of Souls, was released in 2004, with subsequent works pending publication.
Angella Ricot currently lives in the heart of the cosmopolitan city of New York. While her rigorous training laid the foundation for her career, her roots in the Caribbean mixed with the zest of urban city life provide the tapestry for her inspirations.
Visit the author's website.
Follow Angella on Facebook.
Book Reviews
Fantastic, compulsive reading, gripping, could not put it down.... Ricot places at the core of the structure of this book the theme of human trafficking....a theme that is deadly serious, a theme that is harrowing as well as tragic. There is no small wonder she is able to get her teeth into the spirit of this book.... [A] truly thrilling read worthy of the company of fellow female writers like Danielle Steel or Anne Rice. This book is a political satire. But this review will fail in its objective to influence readers to read what is my felt sense that this book is a classic, if I fail to emphasize and re-emphasize that this novel Sahara reads completely like a work of fiction, for it tells a fantastic epic story that holds your interest from start to end.
Michael Mulvihill, Horror Novelist
I read this book in one sitting because I couldn't put it down. It had copious amounts of sex and violence appropriately placed to keep you interested. There were real life characters in the book that you will certainly recognize. However, it is apparent that these characters have fictitious roles in the book. To me, the book is full of symbolism about women and their role in American life. For example, women have no power and at the same time have unlimited power over men. There are some obvious other examples of symbolism in the reading; some jump out at you while others are obfuscated to some degree. This makes re-reading the book enjoyable to ascertain some of these nuances. I recommend reading Sahara by a Great American writer Angella Ricot.
Robert D. Womack
Discussion Questions
1. Fans often ask me what inspired you to write this book?
Current events and world news such as President Bill Clinton and his relationship with Third World countries inspired me.
2. Why do you think that this book will appeal to readers?
It will appeal to a wide audience for it is filled with political intrigues and sensuous games that will keep the reader on his toes and get him/her out of her comfort zone.
3. How is your book relevant in today’s society?
It brings into the spotlight latest political drama, women’s issues and human trafficking.
4. Is there any subject currently trending in the news that relates to your book?
It shares some themes with the television show "Scandal." Sahara is to President Bill Clinton what Olivia Pope is to President Fitzgerald Grant. However, Sahara expands further to touch upon serious issues like drugs trafficking and human trafficking.
5. What makes your book different from other books like it?
The plot and the originality of the characters make Sahara exceptionally different.
6. What do you want readers to take away from your writing?
We are the masters of our own destiny. With enough willpower fate can be overcome.
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
My Name Is Resolute
Nancy E. Turner, 2014
St. Martin's Press
608 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250060976
Summary
Nancy Turner burst onto the literary scene with her hugely popular novels These Is My Words, Sarah's Quilt, and The Star Garden. Now, Turner has written the novel she was born to write, this exciting and heartfelt story of a woman struggling to find herself during the tumultuous years preceding the American Revolution.
The year is 1729, and Resolute Talbot and her siblings are captured by pirates, taken from their family in Jamaica, and brought to the New World. Resolute and her sister are sold into slavery in colonial New England and taught the trade of spinning and weaving.
When Resolute finds herself alone in Lexington, Massachusetts, she struggles to find her way in a society that is quick to judge a young woman without a family. As the seeds of rebellion against England grow, Resolute is torn between following the rules and breaking free.
Resolute's talent at the loom places her at the center of an incredible web of secrecy that helped drive the American Revolution. Heart-wrenching, brilliantly written, and packed to the brim with adventure, My Name is Resolute is destined to be an instant classic. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1959
• Where—Dallas, Texas, USA
• Reared—in Southern California and Arizona
• Education—B.F. A., University of Arizona
• Currently—lives in Tuscon, Arizona
Nancy E. Turner is the author of several works of fiction, including My Name is Resolute (2014), Star Garden (2006), Sarah's Quilt (2004), The Water and the Blood (2001), and These is My Words (1998). She has been a seam snipper in a clothing factory, a church piano player, a paleontologist's aide, and an executive secretary.
She lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband and dog Snickers. She has two married children and three grandchildren. (From the publisher and author's website.)
Book Reviews
Turner has drawn a character whose trials, loves, losses and achievements Turner fans will happily follow.
Tuscon Weekly
Every page of Turner's engrossing and fascinating work is better than the last. Not only historical fiction fans will love this beautifully written and compelling novel.
Library Journal
[T]he author convincingly conveys a pivotal time in American history and provides a rewarding reading experience. A fitting story about resiliency, ingenuity and heroism.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What are the major themes of the story and how are they used in the context of women’s role in any war?
2. How is the beginning of the book mirrored in the ending?
3. Why would Patience hide her suffering from Resolute while they are onboard the ships?
4. With the exception of the actions of fictional characters, what elements of American History did you learn that you had not known before?
5. What use of Resolute’s house do you see for the future?
6. Could you have understood Resolute’s convictions as a woman without knowing her life as a child, assuming the author had made the story begin farther along in her life?
7. Since the history of America is so interwoven with the history of Great Britain in that time, what hints do you find in the story that a separation from the "mother country" was inevitable in the eyes of many Colonials? Why would some have preferred to remain subjects of the Crown?
8. Throughout the novel, Resolute faced dangers, sometimes unaware. Discuss how the different aspects of her life were at risk and how it changed over time.
9. Why would Resolute have sought out the help of Lady Spencer when she had no place to turn?
10. Why do you think Resolute made Cullah return the chairs to the Governor?
11. Without speaking a word about it, Alice became an accomplice to Resolute’s treason. What drew the two women together?
12. What elements of Resolute’s life caused her to be both stubborn and open-minded?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League
Jonathan Odell, 2014
Maiden Lane press
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 978194021004#
Summary
Set in pre-Civil Rights Mississippi, Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League is the story of two young mothers, Hazel and Vida—one wealthy and white and the other poor and black—who have only two things in common: the devastating loss of their children, and a deep and abiding loathing for one another.
Embittered and distrusting, Vida is harassed by Delphi’s racist sheriff and haunted by the son she lost to the world. Hazel, too, has lost a son and can’t keep a grip on her fractured life.
After drunkenly crashing her car into a manger scene while gunning for the baby Jesus, Hazel is sedated and bed-ridden. Hazel’s husband hires Vida to keep tabs on his unpredictable wife and to care for his sole surviving son. Forced to spend time together with no one else to rely on, the two women find they have more in common than they thought, and together they turn the town on its head.
This is the story of a town, a people, and a culture on the verge of a great change that begins with small things, like unexpected friendship. (From the publisher.)
Miss Hazel is an updated and republished version of Odell's 2004 book The View from Delphi. That earlier book was published to strong reviews but tepid sales, said Publishers Weekly. See some earlier reviews below.
Author Bio
Jonathan Odell is the author of two novels, the critically acclaimed The Healing (2012), which was called "required reading" by the New York Post, a "storytelling tour de force" by the Associated Press, and was compared by critics to both Toni Morrison's Beloved and Kathryn Stockett's The Help; and his debut novel, The View from Delphi (MacAdam/Cage, 2004), recently updated and republished as Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League, which is receiving glorious praise from the press and readers alike.
Odell was born and raised in Mississippi. His short stories and essay have appeared in numerous collections. A highly regarded public speaker and leadership coach, he now resides in Minnesota. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
This is an important story beautifully told. It is why we read novels. You will care about these characters — and emerge more aware and empathetic because of them.
Christine Brunkhorst - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Jonathan Odell can take his place in the distinguished pantheon of Southern authors.
Pat Conroy
(Review of 2004 The View from Delphia) Prejudice threatens to tear apart a small Mississippi town during the 1950s in Odell's first novel, a well-told but familiar and slow-moving story about a pair of families who find their lives altered by the bigotry of a small-minded sheriff.
Publishers Weekly
(Review of 2004 The View from Delphia) The View from Delphi shows just how racially divided the country was during the pre-Civil Rights era. For readers younger than 40, this can be a learning experience. From the story of Rosa Parks to the fact the blacks weren’t able to vote at the time, there’s a lot of history in this novel. Although Odell doesn’t bring the entire story to one big happy conclusion, he tells a story of human nature as it really is. And in doing so, he makes readers realize how much alike the races really are.
Southern Scribe
(Review of 2004 The View from Delphia) Fast-paced but thoughtful story of a friendship across the racial divide in 1950s Mississippi. Though he never lets whites off for their pervasive racism, African-American Odell is the rare writer on race who allows for a range of responses—and for the possibility of change. Among his finely drawn characters, both black and white, young—five-year-old Johnny is particularly memorable—and old, he introduces two whose lives are blighted by loss.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Both Floyd and Hazel are driven to leave their homes in the hills. What is it they are in such a rush to escape? Are they both fleeing from the same things? How realistic are their dreams?
2. The novel centers on Hazel and Vida as young mothers with flashbacks to their childhoods. How essential are the early years to our understanding of these women as adults?
3. Discuss Hazel's inability to belong. Would she have had the same issues has she stayed on the farm? How do these issues take shape when she confronts the other wives of her new class and neighborhood?
4. Hazel’s quest for beauty became her only goal as a child when she realized she was unattractive. Why did beauty become the answer to all of her problems? What role does physical beauty play in this novel?
5. Consider Levi’s relationship with the Senator. Where do you see this type of relationship between people today?
6. When Hazel and Vida meet, they are both grieving a loss. How do their losses affect them as women? Do they have any empathy for each other’s loss? Are you able to identify with either or both of the women? How are they changed by their losses? Were these loses necessary to their growth?
7. Discuss the differences in Hazel and Vida’s expectations of the men in their lives.
8. How does Vida come to terms with the hostility she faces from Hazel’s son Johnny? What do you imagine will become of young Johnny? Why do you suppose he was so fearful in the beginning? Why do you think Levi was able to reach him?
9. Consider the ways Hazel finds freedom as well as the times she requires rescuing. What, if any, transformations does she undergo throughout the course of this novel?
10. Consider the same questions for Vida.
11. Women are a central element to the society of Delphi. Odell paints a portrait of the what was considered the 1950s ideal woman throughout this novel. Where does Hazel fit into this ideal at the beginning at the novel and then at the end? What, if any, elements of the stereotypical 1950s woman remains today?
12. Why is Hazel so attracted to the maids? Why is Vida so repulsed by the white women? How is each group of women portrayed differently?
13. How does the balance of power in the relationships in the novel’s characters relationships change over the course of the novel?
14. Ponder the perceptions of sanity and insanity portrayed through the characters of Hazel and Levi Snow. How is the label of crazy the same or different for each?15. What do you imagine for the future of Nate? Will he ever learn the truth and how might that change him if he did?
16. The novel is set largely in 1955. How much do you believe we have changed as a country when it comes to issue of race? As you noticed examples of racism did you recognize incidents from your own life or from the lives of family members of close friends?
17. What were some instances of “internalized” racism (racist beliefs that have been accepted as true by the victims themselves) on the part of Odell’s black characters?
18. If you were to choose either Vida or Hazel as a mother, who would be your choice? Would one make a better mother in contemporary times than the other? Do you think the women had other choices in their given situations?
19. In retrospect, did Vida make a good choice for Nate by “sending him away” consequently growing up as “white” in the North or should she have kept him near her in the Jim Crow south where he would have had grown up as “black”?
20. How does Hazel get her dignity back? What role does Pearl play in that process? How does Hazel’s relationship with her husband change because of this? Do you think her actions are justified?
21. Has Odell offered you a deeper understanding of the civil rights movement that were missed in your textbooks? Do you believe this or any novel or film can help move us toward ending prejudice? Can you offer examples of books of films that made you see the world differently?
22. The summer of 2014 was the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi when local black activists initiated a massive voter registration drive. That summer hundreds of northern white college students came to help. What was the influence of these white students who came down? Some say their impact was largely because, in the eyes of the nation, the lives of the white students killed while trying to register voters had greater value while Blacks who had been fighting back, while being attacked, raped, and killed, trying to change a system.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)