Accidents of Providence
Stacia Brown, 2012
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780547840116
Summary
London, 1649: King Charles has been beheaded for treason, Cromwell is in power, the Levelers are demanding rights for the people, and a new law targeting unwed mothers presumes anyone who conceals the death of her illegitimate child is guilty of murder.
Glovemaker Rachel Lockyer is locked in a secret affair. But while her lover is imprisoned in the Tower, a child is found buried in the woods. Rachel is arrested. So comes an investigation, a trial, and an extraordinary cast of characters all brought to reckon for this one life. Spinning within is a remarkable love story and evidence that miracles come to even the commonest lives.
Accidents of Providence, by Stacia M. Brown, depicts the life of an ordinary woman living in early modern London during the Interregnum, the kind of person often overlooked by the history books and films centered in the period.
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Even in her own time, Rachel Lockyer is hardly noticed by others: she is an unmarried woman who struggles to support herself, living on the margins of society, and she cannot easily be slotted into one of the few roles available to women. But the novel opens up her life to us allowing us to glimpse her inner self, her passions and her humanity. When she falls in love with William Walwyn (a real historical figure), she finds herself swept up in the tide of history and a victim of Puritanical laws. These laws dismiss her worth and her humanity as much as the politicians who would use her as a symbol or the historians who would forget her story altogether.
At the center of this story is the mystery of what happened to her infant daughter, a child whose illegitimate birth is a crime in itself, and whose death puts Rachel in the middle of a debate over morality, law, love, and betrayal. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Stacia Brown grew up in Asheville, North Carolina. She earned graduate degrees in religion and historical theology from Emory University in Atlanta. A historian by training, she was a Woodruff Fellow at the Candler School of Theology, a W.M. Keck Foundation Fellow at the Huntington Library, and a Fellow of the Hambidge Center. Before moving to Atlanta, Stacia worked as a swing-shift monitor for a 250-bed homeless shelter in San Francisco. She lives and works in Decatur, Georgia. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Dangerous Liaisons: A 17th century heroine for our times...[A] delightfully seditious heroine...Brown introduces a wonderful cast of supporting characters.... For all its period detail, this debut seems remarkably modern in its depiction of love and politics—proof that a historical novel can be educational and entertaining, and nothing like homework.
Oprah Magazine
(Starred review.) Debut novelist Brown has woven an absorbing tale...her story reveals a rich knowledge of the era with memorable characters, sharp, period-worthy dialog, and a poignant love story...This is the best kind of historical fiction—a combination of love story and murder mystery, wtih a sprinkling of intriguing historical snippets and wonderful writing.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Brown's first novel is a heart-poundingly vivid, intellectually provocative account of the legal case against a fictional woman condemned to death for secretly burying her dead, illegitimate newborn in Cromwell's England. In 1649....aging and ailing criminal investigator Thomas Bartwain reluctantly builds his case against Rachel Lockyer, an unmarried glovemaker's apprentice, for breaking the 1624 "Act to Prevent the Destroying and Murdering of Bastard Children." ... Events in the plot are based on historical incidents, and one of the book's many joys is the way fictional...and historical figures...weave seamlessly together; everyone's motives and reactions are richly complex. A romping good read that is character-driven yet intellectually provocative on issues of law, religion and morality—historical fiction at its best.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What do we know about Rachel Lockyer? “They knew her less for who she was than for who and what she was not. She was not a matron. She was not a mother. She was not well educated. She was not much of a Christian” (p. 39). Was she any of the things others thought she wasn’t? What did Rachel believe in? By what standards did she define herself? By what sort of standards do you define yourself and others?
2. Why was the 1624 Act to Prevent the Destroying and Murdering of Bastard Children created? What are the details of it? What are its flaws and its loopholes? Was it right for Rachel to be prosecuted according to its writ?
3. Criminal Investigator Thomas Bartwain firmly believes that “The law is itself the end. The law is beautiful; the law is order. If we have not law, we have nothing” (p. 94). Yet by the end of the novel he admits that “the law is wrong” (p. 179). In the course of reaching this conclusion Bartwain is influenced by a variety of experiences. Beyond his assessment of Rachel’s case, he had some meaningful conversations with his wife, a distracting and distressing battle with the mice in his house, and increasingly severe physical ailments. What do you think most influenced his change of opinion? What do you think was his role in the novel?
4. Compare the infant-murder trials of early modern England to the witch hunts of colonial North America. What were their religious roots? Did they emphasize punishment for sin, or for the concealment of sin? What does that distinction mean?
5. “You are a mother when you have lost something. When you have felt the change and cannot hold it,” Mary tells Rachel (p. 183). When do you believe someone becomes a mother? Was Rachel a mother? How does her experience of motherhood differ from the other women in the book?
6. On page 72, Rachel and Walwyn have an argument about the punishment of a boy convicted of stealing food. Rachel doesn’t seem to think it’s as “barbaric” as Walwyn claims. Did her attitude on this issue—and other political issues the Levelers take up—surprise you? What did you think of Rachel’s political views in general and how they, and her place in this tumultuous political period, were presented?
7. Rachel’s friendship with Elizabeth Lilburne, her place in Mary du Gard’s home and work, and her relationship with her mother all place her within reach of support from other women. Does she get this support? In what ways? Does this story make you think further about the level of responsibility we should feel for each other’s lives and welfare? For the lives of the children in our communities?
8. On page 176, in a final desperate attempt to save her, Walwyn offers his life in exchange for Rachel’s. Why does Bartwain believe Walwyn’s life is “worth more”? When do you think one person’s life is worth more than another’s? Would your opinions be different if you lived during the period in which this book is set?
9. Rachel Lockyer has few connections to the world around her: her only strong family tie was to her brother Robert. How do you think Robert’s death (described in chapter eight) affected her later decisions? What about her estranged relationship from her mother? How does Rachel’s position in the community—her work as a tradeswoman, her unmarried status—affect how she is perceived by the other characters in the book? By her accusers and the public?
10. How would you characterize the romantic and married relationships in the book? What is the status of wife and woman in this period? What is the author telling us about the period through these relationships, and how do they differ from such relationships in contemporary America? Is this a feminist book?
11. Were you frustrated by Rachel’s refusal to explain what had happened or to defend herself to Bartwain or in court? Why do you think she kept silent?
12. “You saved me,” Walwyn tells Rachel. “You are wholly good” (p. 152). How did Walwyn and Rachel save each other? Do you believe Rachel is good? Can anyone be “wholly” good?
13. Mary du Gard plays a small but vital role in Rachel’s saga. The novel begins and ends with her perspective. Why do you think the author chose to have Mary bookend the story?
14. Are there parallels between the birth and death of Rachel’s child (p. 209) and her own “death”? If so, do you draw any significance from those parallels? What do you make of the role of miracles in this story, religiously, politically, and mythically?
15. “…for whatever green shoots might by some accident of providence have thrust their spindly arms up from the barren soil overnight” (p. 73). Did you notice “accidents of providence” in the book? Is this an apt title? What does it mean for providence to admit to accidents, here and in your own life?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Life After Life
Jill McCorkle, 2013
Algonquin of Chapel Hill
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781565122550
Summary
Award-winning author Jill McCorkle takes us on a splendid journey through time and memory in this, her tenth work of fiction.
Life After Life is filled with a sense of wonder at our capacity for self-discovery at any age. And the residents, staff, and neighbors of the Pine Haven retirement center (from twelve-year-old Abby to eighty-five-year-old Sadie) share some of life’s most profound discoveries and are some of the most true-to-life characters that you are ever likely to meet in fiction.
—There’s retired third-grade teacher Sadie Randolph, who has taught every child in town and believes we are all eight years old in our hearts;
—Stanley Stone, a prominent lawyer, now feigning dementia to escape life with his son;
—Marge Walker, the town’s self-appointed conveyor of social status, who keeps a scrapbook of every local murder and heinous crime;
—Rachel Silverman, recently widowed, whose decision to leave her Massachusetts home and settle at Pine Haven is a puzzle to everyone but her;
—C.J., the pierced and tattooed young mother who runs the beauty shop;
—Joanna Lamb, the hospice volunteer who discovers that her path to a good life lies in helping people achieve good deaths.
As each character begins to connect with another, the mysteries and consequences of their lives are revealed. What they eventually learn about themselves and one another will profoundly transform them all.
Delivered with her trademark wit, Jill ?McCorkle’s constantly surprising novel illuminates the possibilities of second chances, hope, and rediscovering life right up to the very end. With Life After Life, she has conjured up an ?entire community that reminds all of us that grace and magic can—and do—appear when we least expect it. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 7, 1958
• Where—Lumberton, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina; M.A., Hollins College.
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Hillsborourgh, North Carolina
Jill Collins McCorkle is an American short story writer and novelist. She graduated from University of North Carolina, in 1980, where she studied with Max Steele, Lee Smith, and Louis D. Rubin. She obtained her M.A. from Hollins College.
Novels
McCorkle has the distinction of having her first two novels published on the same day in 1984. Of these novels, the New York Times Book Review said, “One suspects the author of The Cheer Leader is a born novelist, with July 7th, she is also a full grown one.”
Since then she has published several other novels—including Life After Life (2013) and Hieroglyphics (2020). Five of her books have been named New York Times notable books
Stories
McCorkle has also published four collections of short stories, out of which four stories have been tapped for Best American Short Stories and several collected in New Stories from the South. Her short stories have appeared in the Atlantic, Ploughshares, Oxford American, Southern Review, Narrative Magazine and American Scholar among others.
Her story “Intervention” is included in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. An essay, “Cuss Time,” originally published in American Scholar was selected for Best American Essays. Other essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Garden and Gun, Southern Living, Our State, Allure and Real Simple.
Teaching
McCorkle has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill, Tufts, and Brandeis where she was the Fannie Hurst Visiting Writer. She was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard for five years where she also chaired Creative Writing.
Currently, McCorkle teaches creative writing in the MFA Program at NC State University and is a core faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She is a frequent instructor in the Sewanee Summer Writers Program and a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Awards
New England Booksellers Award
John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature
North Carolina Award for Literature
McCorckle lives with her husband, photographer Tom Rankin, in Hillsborough, NC. (Adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
McCorkle...look[s] at the regrets that haunt the end of a life. [The book's] saddest and most unlovable characters are her most compelling.… McCorkle [is] interested in capturing moments that ring true than in providing closure.
Publishers Weekly
It takes a skillful author to write a book about death that leaves the reader feeling uplifted, and McCorkle is such an author. [This] multilayered… excellent novel [is] unusual in its shifting construction. —Shaunna E. Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll. Lib., VA
Library Journal
Assisted living residents and a hospice worker confront the inevitable with grit and humor. A potentially cliched unifying device,… [any] predictability is dispelled by the jaw-dropping ending. McCorkle's masterful microcosm invokes profound sadness, harsh insight and guffaws, often on the same page.
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.
Ordinary Grace
William Kent Krueger, 2013
Atria Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451645859
Summary
That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.
New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.
Frank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family—which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother—he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years.
Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 16, 1950
• Where—Torrington, Wyoming, USA
• Education—Stanford University (no degree)
• Awards—Anthony Award's Best Novel (twice); Anthony Award's Best First Novel; Loft-McKnight Award
• Currently—lives in St. Paul, Minnesota
William Kent Krueger is an American author and crime writer, best known for the 13 novels of his Cork O'Connor series of books, ending with Tamarack County in 2013. The series is set mainly in Minnesota, USA. In 2005 and 2006, he won back-to-back Anthony Awards for best novel. Only one other author has done this since the award's inception in 1986.
Krueger has said that he wanted to be a writer from the third grade, when his story "The Walking Dictionary" was praised by his teacher and parents.
He attended Stanford University but his academic path was cut short when he came into conflict with the university's administration during student protests of spring 1970. Throughout his early life, he supported himself by logging timber, digging ditches, working in construction, and being published as a freelance journalist. He never stopped writing.
He wrote short stories and sketches for many years, but it was not until the age of 40 that he finished the manuscript of his first novel, Iron Lake. It won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, the Barry Award for Best First Novel, the Minnesota Book Award, and the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award.
In 2013 he published his first stand-alone novel Ordinary Grace, referred to by Publishers Weekly as "elegiac, evocative....a resonant tale of fury, guilt, and redemption."
He lives with family in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Writing influences
Krueger has said his favorite book is To Kill A Mockingbird. He grew up reading Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James T. Farrell. Most influential among these was Hemingway. In an interview for Shots magazine, Krueger described his admiration for Hemingway's prose:
His prose is clean, his word choice perfect, his cadence precise and powerful. He wastes nothing. In Hemingway, what’s not said is often the whole point of a story. I like that idea, leaving the heart off the page so that the words, the prose itself, is the first thing to pierce you. Then the meaning comes.
As a mystery genre writer, Krueger credits Tony Hillerman and James Lee Burke as his strongest influences.
Writing process
Krueger prefers to write early in the morning. Rising at 5.30 am, he goes to the nearby St Clair Broiler, where he drinks coffee and writes long-hand in wirebound notebooks.
He began going to the diner in his 30s when he had to make time for writing early in the morning before going to work at the University of Minnesota. He continues the habit, and today has his "own" booth there. In return for his loyalty, the restaurant has hosted book launches for Krueger. At one, the staff wore T-shirts emblazoned with "A nice place to visit. A great place to die."
Cork O'Connor series
When Krueger decided to set the series in northern Minnesota, he realized that a large percentage of the population was of mixed ancestry. In college, Krueger had wanted to be a cultural anthropologist; he became intrigued by researching the Ojibwe culture and weaving the information into his books. Krueger's books are set in and around Native American reservations. The main character, Cork O'Connor is part Ojibwe, part Irish.
History was a study in futility. Because people never learned. Century after century, they committed the same atrocities against one another or against the earth, and the only thing that changed was the magnitude of the slaughter... Conscience was a devil that plagued the individual. Collectively, a people squashed it as easily as stepping on a daisy.
Krueger has read the first Ojibwe historian, William Whipple Warren, as well as Francis Densmore, Gerald Vizenor and Basil Johnston. He has also read novels by Louise Erdrich and Jim Northrup. Krueger began to meet and get to know the Ojibwe people and remains fascinated by their culture.
His descriptions are meant to express his characters' feelings about the settings. Krueger believes that the sense of place is made resonant by the actions and emotions of the characters within it. He describes it as "a dynamic bond that has the potential to heighten the drama of every scene." (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Once in a blue moon a book drops down on your desk that demands to be read. You pick it up and read the first page, and then the second, and you are hooked. Such a book is Ordinary Grace…This is a book that makes the reader feel better just by having been exposed to the delights of the story. It will stay with you for quite some time and you will always remember it with a smile.
Huffington Post
[E]legiac, evocative.... The summer of 1961 finds thirteen-year-old Frank Drum living in small-town New Bremen, Minn. He and his younger brother, Jake, idolize their older sister, Ariel.... The Drums’ peaceful existence is shattered, however, when Ariel fails to return from a late-night party. In the aftermath of her disappearance...dark secrets about New Bremen come to light....for what becomes a resonant tale of fury, guilt, and redemption.
Publishers Weekly
For fans of Wiley Cash’s A Land More Kind Than Home or Krueger’s other works, this is a touching read, with just enough intrigue to keep the story moving along. —Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH
Library Journal
A thoughtful literary mystery that is wholly compelling and will appeal to fans of Dennis Lehane and Tom Franklin.... Don’t take the title too literally, for Krueger has produced something that is anything but ordinary.
BookPage
One cannot read Ordinary Grace without feeling as if it is destined to be hailed as a classic work of literature. Ordinary Grace is one of those very rare books in which one regrets reaching its end, knowing that the experience of having read it for the first time will never be repeated. Krueger, who is incapable of writing badly, arguably has given us his masterpiece.
Bookreporter.com
(Starred review.) A respected mystery writer turns his attention to the biggest mystery of all: God.... Krueger aims higher and hits harder with a stand-alone novel that shares much with his other work.... [A] series of...deaths shake the world of Frank Drum, the 13-year-old narrator.... One of the novel's pivotal mysteries concerns the gaps among what Frank experiences (as a participant and an eavesdropper), what he knows and what he thinks he knows.... Yet, ultimately, the world of this novel is one of redemptive grace and mercy, as well as unidentified corpses and unexplainable tragedy. A novel that transforms narrator and reader alike.
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)
SPOILER ALERT
1. Talk about the characters, starting with Ruth and Nathan Drum, the narrator's mother and father. How would you describe them and, especially, their marriage?
2. What do you think of Emil Brandt and his sister?
3. How would you describe Gus? What is the bond between Gus and Nathan based on? What do you think was the event during the war that the two refer to obliquely as they sit together in the darkened church.
4. Discuss, in particular, Nathan's sermon after Ariel's death? What are its theological implications? Does Nathan answer the question of theodicy: if God is loving and all powerful, why do bad things to happen to good people?
5. What prompts Frank, after his father's sermon, to go to Jake and tell him, "You're my best friend in the whole world. You always have been and you always will be"?
6. Why is Ruth so angry with Nathan after Ariel disappears? How would you respond to such a horrific loss: would you respond as Ruth does, in anger? Or would you be more like Nathan?
7. How would you define grace? What, specifically, does "ordinary grace" refer to in the story, and what is the larger religious significance of the term "ordinary grace"? Why is the grace spoken by Jake so extraordinary...and how does it affect members of his family?
8. Whom did you first suspect...and when did you begin to suspect the real killer? What "red herrings" (false clues) does the author put in the way to lead readers down the wrong path?
9. Much of the book has to do with young Frank's attempt to separate what he thinks he knows from what might (or might not) be the ultimate truth. Have you even been in a position of "knowing" something with certainty...and then learning that your judgment was wrong? How can we guard ourselves against false accusations?
10. What does Warren Redstone mean when he says to Frank, "You've just killed me, white boy"? Why does Frank let Redstone escape? Even Jake tells us...
How could I possibly explain my silence, my complicity in his escape, things I didn't really understand myself? My heart had simply directed me in a way my head couldn't wrap its thinking around....
Was Jake wrong to let Redstone get away? Should he have kept silent?
11. Talk about Karl Brandt and how he dies—an accident...or intentional?
12. What do you think happened to Bobby Cole? Why might the author have left that mystery unresolved?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Reconstructing Amelia
Kimberly McCreight, 2013
HarperCollins
382 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062225436
Summary
When Kate, single mother and law firm partner, gets an urgent phone call summoning her to her daughter's exclusive private school, she's shocked. Amelia has been suspended for cheating, something that would be completely out of character for her over-achieving, well-behaved daughter.
Kate rushes to Grace Hall, but what she finds when she finally arrives is beyond comprehension. Her daughter Amelia is dead.
Despondent over having been caught cheating, Amelia has jumped from the school's roof in an act of impulsive suicide. At least that's the story Grace Hall and the police tell Kate. In a state of shock and overcome by grief, Kate tries to come to grips with this life-shattering news. Then she gets an anonymous text:
Amelia didn't jump.
The moment she sees that message, Kate knows in her heart it's true. Clearly Amelia had secrets, and a life Kate knew nothing about. Wracked by guilt, Kate is determined to find out what those secrets were and who could have hated her daughter enough to kill. She searches through Amelia's e-mails, texts, and Facebook updates, piecing together the last troubled days of her daughter's life.
Reconstructing Amelia is a stunning debut page-turner that brilliantly explores the secret world of teenagers, their clandestine first loves, hidden friendships, and the dangerous cruelty that can spill over into acts of terrible betrayal. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Kimberly McCreight attended Vassar College and graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. After several years as a litigation associate at some of New York City’s biggest law firms, she left the practice of law to write full-time. Her work has appeared in such publications as Antietam Review, Oxford Magazine, Babble, and New York Magazine online. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with her husband and two daughters. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Like Gone Girl, Reconstructing Amelia seamlessly marries a crime story with a relationship drama. And like Gone Girl, it should be hailed as one of the best books of the year.
Entertainment Weekly
After her teenage daughter Amelia’s mysterious suicide, litigation attorney Kate Baron becomes an unlikely amateur sleuth in McCreight’s diverting, if busy, debut.... [A] series of anonymous text messages intimating[e] that Amelia was actually murdered.... Amelia’s first-person narration provides the most human note, as McCreight portrays the darkness of adolescence, complete with doomed love, bullies, poisonous friendship, and insecurity. Fans of literary thrillers will enjoy the novel’s dark mood and clever form, even if the mystery doesn’t entirely hold together.
Publishers Weekly
Alternating perspectives from Kate and Amelia reveal the inner lives of a woman trying to balance motherhood with a demanding career and a teenager struggling with her blossoming sexuality while dealing with severe bullying. Despite a plot heavily dependent on coincidence, this is a compulsively readable novel that will appeal to Jodi Picoult fans. —Michele Leber, Arlington, VA
Library Journal
An elaborately plotted mystery.... A harrowing story.... McCreight does a fne job of building suspense and creating characters, notably Kate and Amelia, whom the target audience—both adults and older teens—will care about and empathize with.
Booklist
Former attorney McCreight pens a multilayered legal thriller. Single mom Kate Baron struggles with the unholy demands that come with being an associate at a high-powered New York City law firm while raising her 15-year-old daughter, Amelia.... Amelia has fallen from the school roof, a victim of her own failure..., but Kate]doesn't believe Amelia killed herself.... The author tells the story in flashbacks, alternating between Kate's and Amelia's point of view, leading up to the day Amelia died.... [T]he book never bogs down and comes to a seamless and unanticipated conclusion.... [A] solid debut novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is Amelia's relationship like with her mother? Why doesn't she share more with Kate? Why are adolescents often so reluctant to talk to their parents about the events in their lives—especially problems they are having with friends?
2. Describe Amelia. Is she a typical teenager? Talk about her friendship with Sylvia. What drew the girls together? What about her relationships with Zadie and Dylan? What made her feel so close to her Internet friend, Ben?
3. Might Amelia's situation have been different if she'd had a larger family around her? What if that family had been larger, but more filled with conflict?
4. Is Kate a good mother? She believes she knows her daughter well, but does she? What does she discover about Amelia that surprises her? What does she discover that confirms her deepest beliefs about Amelia and their relationship?
5. What kind of a support network does Kate have to rely on? Does she bear any blame for the events that occur? Is there any way she could have prevented the tragedy? What about Grace Hall—how much, if any, responsibility does the school bear for Amelia's death? Who can you turn to for help in handling a problem involving your child?
6. Why is being popular so important in adolescence? Has the Internet and social networking added to the pressures teenagers must cope with?
7. What impact does class play in the story? What about sexuality—Amelia's recognition of her own desires? What about Amelia's need to be perfect—her drive to be a good student?
8. Why does such a smart girl like Amelia fall into the trap of the secret clubs? Why isn't she more suspicious of the Magpies and the boys around them? How did her keeping the secret about the Maggies impact her relationship with Sylvia? Why are some children cruel to others? Did your school have a hierarchy or clubs like the Magpies? Where did you fit it?
9. If you have a child, how much do you know about his or her life? How far should parents go to monitor their child's life? Do children have a right to privacy the way adults do? What might someone learn if they tried to "reconstruct" you from your emails, correspondence, texts, tweets, messages, blog posts, and Facebook updates? Does social media make us too connected? What is your opinion of social media—do you think it's a positive development or an erosion of who we are and how we interact?
10. How does the author ratchet up the suspense in the story? What clues does she provide to point you toward the truth—or away from it?
11. Bullying is a major topic across the media and throughout society. Do you believe it is a serious issue, or do you think it's a phase that all children go through? How has the rise of the Internet contributed to the severity of bullying and to our awareness of it? Can we decrease the incidents of bullying? How do we learn to stand up to mean people?
12. Does Kate get closure when she discovers the truth? Where do you think she will go from here?
13. What inspired you or your group to choose Reconstructing Amelia? Did it meet your expectations? Is it an accurate representation of modern parenting and growing up in twenty-first century America? What did you take away from reading the book?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
He Belongs to Me
Theresa Rizzo, 2013
self-published
pp. 394
ISBN-13: 978098045018 (e-book only)
Summary
Catherine Boyd will do anything to regain custody of her young son… Even reconcile with the husband accused of killing their son’s twin.
Catherine graduates from college, eager to start a new life with her six-year-old son, Drew. But when she tries to bring him home, her parents refuse to relinquish control of the grandson they’d raised.
Wrongly accused of a horrible crime, Thomas Boyd has buried himself in his career, determined to forget his painful past and the family he lost. But now, five years later, Catherine is back, requesting his help to regain custody of their son—custody he thought she had. Though older and wiser, when courtroom battles reveal lies and secrets and generations of pain, will Thomas and Catherine find more tragedy and loss, or will old wounds finally heal?
Catherine Boyd will do anything to regain custody of her young son… Even reconcile with the husband accused of killing their son’s twin. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Born into an Irish-Italian family, there was never a dull moment in Theresa Rizzo’s home growing up in Grosse Point, Mich. And despite her struggle as a child with mild dyslexia, Rizzo loved books and became a voracious reader. Still, growing up the daughter of a nurse and a general surgeon, Rizzo hadn’t considered a career in writing.
She studied to be a registered nurse in college in Riverdale, New York, when she also married her high school sweetheart and moved to Long Island.They later relocated to the suburbs of Chicago, then headed to the west coast for five years in sunny San Diego, Calif. before settling down near Boulder, Colo.
Writing became Rizzo’s creative outlet, and almost a type of therapy for her while dealing with the every day stresses as a mom of four. Creating manuscripts for over 16 years, Rizzo is now an award-winning writer who pens emotional stories that explore the complexity of relationships and families through real-life trials.
She is a member of the Romance Writers of America and the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, and serves as the co-coordinator of the annual Crested Butte Writers Conference. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
Theresa Rizzo offers up a story of a family torn apart by secrets and lies, and a
woman’s courageous journey to reclaim the truth. This is a perfect blend of suspense
and romance, for readers who can’t resist a page-turner.
Susan Wiggs - New York Times Bestselling Author
This is a story that will command the attention of any parent, and probably everyone
else, too. The courtroom battles are especially gripping, filled with twists and turns.
Theresa Rizzo knows how to speak to the heart.
William Bernhardt - New York Times Bestselling Autho
Discussion Questions
1. Thomas and Catherine were driven apart by not only the death of their infant, but by terrible accusations charging Thomas with accidentally murdering him. How many young couples would have been strong enough to endure a tragedy such as that, defy her father, move away, and go to college? Would you have, or would your marriage have ended in divorce?
2. Parents often rule their children's lives under the guise of orchestrating what is "good for them", but are they fooling themselves? In what way did Eric fool himself that Catherine wasn't ready to mother Drew? What subconscious reason drove his belief? Do you make decisions for your children that are truly "for their own good," or might you sometimes have other, deeper, reasons that direct your decisions?
3. Eric testified, honestly, that had Catherine married a young man from a prominent family, such as a Kennedy or a Ford, he probably would not have opposed their marriage and probably would not have withheld her trust fund. When considering young people marrying, do social standing and family name really matter? How? Why?
4. After Catherine graduated from Stanford, she had a job and a home. Should she have just kept Drew and forced her parents to sue her to regain custody? After all, she is Drew's mother.
5. Catherine's mother, Sarah, was not a nurturing woman, yet she did quite well with her grandson. What changed? How could she love and understand Drew and not her own children? Is raising a grandchild really that different?
6. Emotional abuse and neglect is difficult to prove. Is it a good enough reason to keep children from having a relationship with their grandparents?
7. Given that the baby died in his hands, Thomas always carried a deep-seeded belief that he might have accidentally killed his infant son. Going to jail and enduring the beginnings of the trial was a humiliating, terrifying experience. So when the person he loved and trusted most in this world, Catherine, said that she believe he was guilty of killing their baby and that she could never trust him with Drew, she wounded him as no other could. Can Thomas ever really forgive her? Could you?
8. Catherine said awful things to Thomas to drive him away, knowing she'd devastate him and break his heart, but it was "for his own good." Was she any better than her father who interfered in her life "for her own good"? Is "for your own good" a good enough reason to take away a young adult's choice in a situation that is not life or death?
9. When Catherine's life is endangered during Elisa's delivery, Thomas orders the doctor to save his wife. If it comes to a choice, he wants the doctor to save Catherine and allow the baby to die. Do you agree with this decision? Does it make a difference if you are the pregnant woman who could die, or if it is your loved one who may die?
10. Eric pushed his children to excel at sports and academics. Andrew and Catherine's education was extremely important to him. In wanting the best for our children, parents often get caught up in reliving their youth through their children. Did Eric? If you're honest, do you?
11. Neither Catherine nor Thomas had an ideal, leave-it-to-Beaver childhood. Underneath family facades, what percentage of adults are luck enough to experience emotionally healthy childhoods? Are Catherine and Thomas' families highly dysfunctional or, unfortunately, more the secret norm?
12. Will Eric and Sarah's marriage survive what she did to Catherine?
(Questions provided courtsey of the author.)