Pay It Forward
Catherine Ryan Hyde, 1999
Simon & Schuster
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439170403
Summary
Pay It Forward is a wondrous and moving story about Trevor McKinney, a twelve-year-old boy in a small California town who accepts the challenge that his teacher gives his class, a chance to earn extra credit by coming up with a plan to change the world for the better—and to put that plan into action.
The plan that Trevor comes up with is so simple—and so naive—that when others learn of it they are dismissive. Even Trevor himself begins to doubt when his pay it forward plan seems to founder on a combination of bad luck and the worst of human nature.
What is his idea? Trevor chooses three people for whom he will do a favor, and then when those people thank him and ask how they might pay him back, he will tell them that instead of paying him back they should each pay it forward by choosing three people for whom they can do favors, and in turn telling those people to Pay it Forward. It's nothing less than a human chain letter of kindness and good will. But will it work?
In the end, Pay It Forward is the story of seemingly ordinary people made extraordinary by the simple faith of a child. In the tradtion of the successful and inspirational television show Touched by an Angel, and the phenomenally successful novel and film Forrest Gump, Pay It Forward is a work of charm, wit, and remarkable inspriation, a story of hope for today and for many tomorrows to come. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1955
• Where—N/A
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Cambria, California
Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of the best selling novel Pay It Forward and numerous short stories, including the collection Earthquake Weather. She lives in Cambria, California. (From the publisher.)
More
Catherine Ryan Hyde s an American novelist and short story writer, whose novels have enjoyed bestseller status in both the US and UK, and whose short stories have won many awards and honors.
Hyde is the author of the novel Funerals for Horses (1997), a collection of short fiction, Earthquake Weather (1998), the novels Pay it Forward (1999), Electric God (2000), and Walter’s Purple Heart (2002). More recent novels include Becoming Chloe (2006), Love in the Present Tense (2006), The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance (2007), Chasing Windmills (2008) and The Day I Killed James 2008).
The 1999 novel, Pay It Forward, has been translated into 20 languages for publication in more than 30 countries, and chosen among the Best Books for Young Adults 2001 by the American Library Association. Its 2000 film adaptation starred Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment.
Her 2006 novel, Love in the Present Tense, enjoyed bestseller status in the UK, where it broke the top ten, spent five weeks on the list, was reviewed on a major TV book club, and shortlisted for a Best Read of the Year award at the British Book Awards.
More than 45 of her short stories have been published in The Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sun, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and many other journals. Her story "Bloodlines" was reprinted in the bestselling anthology Dog is my Co-Pilot (2003).
Two of her stories have been honored in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. She received second place in the 1997 Bellingham Review Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. Nearly a dozen of her stories have been nominated for Best American Short Stories, The O’Henry Award and The Pushcart Prize. Three have been cited in Best American Short Stories anthologies.
She has served on the 1998 fiction fellowship panel of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and on the editorial staff of the Santa Barbara Review and Central Coast Magazine. She teaches workshops at the Santa Barbara, La Jolla and Central Coast Writers Conferences.
She is founder and president of the Pay It Forward Foundation. As a professional public speaker she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University, and met with Americorps members at the White House. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The story is a quick read, told with lean sentences and an edge.... Hyde pulls off a poignant, gutsy ending without bathos.
Los Angeles Times
The philosophy behind the book is so intriguing, and the optimism so contagious, that the reader is carried along with what turns out to be a book that lingers long after the last page is turned.
Denver Post
Eighth-grader Trevor is challenged by his social-studies teacher to do something that will change the world. And he does. His rule is to do one very good deed for three different people, telling them that rather than paying him back, they are to "pay it forward" to three others. When the numbers grow exponentially, The Movement starts and the world is changed. Hyde uses a variety of writing styles and techniques to present the story: a first-person account by Chris, the journalist who writes about The Movement; excerpts from his books; transcripts of his interviews; entries from Trevor's diary; and a third-person narration. The central character changes in these chapters as the story moves forward but these shifts are clear enough that most readers should not be confused. A short, unsavory sexual episode results in a violent, sacrificial ending that is softened somewhat through foreshadowing. (Young Adults) —Claudia Moore, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
School Library Journal
An ordinary boy engineers a secular miracle in Hyde's winning second novel, set in small-town 1990s California. Twelve-year-old Trevor McKinney, the son of Arlene, a single mom working two jobs, and Ricky, a deadbeat absentee dad, does not seem well-positioned to revolutionize the world. But when Trevor's social studies teacher, Reuben St. Clair, gives the class an extra-credit assignment, challenging his students to design a plan to change society, Trevor decides to start a goodwill chain. To begin, he helps out three people, telling each of them that instead of paying him back, they must "pay it forward" by helping three others. At first, nothing seems to work out as planned, not even Trevor's attempt to bring Arlene and Reuben together. Granted, Trevor's mother and his teacher are an unlikely couple: she is a small, white, attractive, determined but insecure recovering alcoholic; he is an educated black man who lost half his face in Vietnam. But eventually romance does blossom, and unbeknownst to Trevor, his other attempts to help do "pay forward," yielding a chain reaction of newsworthy proportions. Reporter Chris Chandler is the first to chase down the story, and Hyde's narrative is punctuated with excerpts from histories Chandler publishes in later years (Those Who Knew Trevor Speak and The Other Faces Behind the Movement), as well as entries from Trevor's journal. Trevor's ultimate martyrdom, and the extraordinary worldwide success of his project, catapult the drama into the realm of myth, but Hyde's simple prose rarely turns preachy. Her [Frank] Capra-esque theme, that one person can make a difference, may be sentimental, but for once, that's a virtue.
Publishers Weekly
It started with a school assignment that a 12-year-old boy embraced, and it changed everything. When Reuben St. Clair wrote on the blackboard "Think of an Idea for World Change, and Put It Into Action," Trevor McKinney (who understood the concept of compounding) came up with the idea of Paying Forward. That is, he'll do something really good for three people, who, instead of paying him back, will be asked to pay it forwardAby aiding someone else. (And so on, and so on.) But hard as he tries, Trevor's projects seem to fail: a down-and-out stranger, financed by Trevor's paper route money, buys drink and drugs; widowed Mrs. Greenberg, whose beloved garden Trevor tends, dies; and Trevor's attempts at matchmaking his lonely teacher with his feisty single mother sparks then fizzles. But then, things take a turn for the better: provisions in Mrs. Greenberg's will keep the movement going and saving lives, and then a tenacious reporter tells the story. Even if the seed for this concept came from Lloyd Douglas's Magnificent Obsession, Hyde's (Earthquake Weather) book is still an uplifting, tear-jerking, and inspiring modern fable, with an extremely appealing young protagonist. For all reading audiences. —Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA
Library Journal
The buzz is big for this heartwarming, funny, and bittersweet story from Hyde (Funerals for Horses, not reviewed) about a teenager's plan to better the world. It all starts with a man and a boy. The man, Reuben St. Clair, a social-studies teacher who believes in positive thinking but whos also a badly disfigured, black Vietnam vet struggling daily with the way people look at him, assigns the following for extra credit: "Think of an idea for world change, and put it into action." The boy, Trevor McKinney, takes the assignment to heart, not only because his mother, Arlene, is battling with alcohol and his father's gone missing, but also because he likes Reuben and begins to think maybe his mom would too. Trevor develops a pyramid payback scheme of good deeds, with the flow of payment reversed, and starts by finding three people he believes he can help, each of whom pledges to help three others. The first, a homeless addict/mechanic, receives Trevor's paper-route earnings and a place to shower before a job interview, but then blows his first paycheck on cocaine and ends up in jail. The second, an elderly woman on the paper route, receives all the yard- and garden-work she needs for free, but later dies in her sleep. The third, Reuben and Arlene considered together as a dysfunctional unit, are brought together by Trevor so they can help each other out of loneliness and just maybe give him a dad in the bargain, but they mix like oil and water. Apparently negative results prove to be just the opposite, however, and, unbeknownst to Trevor, his project snowballs into a national phenomenon with no end in sight. Invited to Washington to be honored by President Clinton, Trevor decides to do one more good deed, a selfless act that again succeeds beyond his wildest expectations. A quiet, steady masterpiece, with an incandescent ending.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. When Trevor first presents his Pay-It-Forward plan—as a way to change the world for the better—many dismiss it. Why? What does their dismissal say about Trevor's plan and what does it say about those wrote it off? Would you have dismissed Pay-It-Forward? (Be objective—pretend you've just learned of Trevor's project for the first time. What would have been your initial reaction?)
2. Eventually, Pay-It-Forward begins to work, creating a chain reaction and becoming a Movement. Why does the concept take hold? What is it about the plan that inspires people? Describe its basic idea and give it another name (rather than pay-it-forward).
3. Talk about Reuben St. Claire. What kind of teacher is he...and what kind of human being? Why might the author have created a character with a severe facial disfigurement? And what's the irony behind the name, St. Claire? Does he live up to his name?
4. What about Arlene, Trevor's mother? What kind of character is she? What does Trevor see in her that makes him believe, at heart, that she's a worthy individual who deserves better than she's got.
5. The story is told through various point-of-view devices: first- and third-person narrators, book excerpts, interview transcripts, journal entries, and central character shifts. Do Hyde's narrative techniques work? Do they enhance the story or make it confusing? Why might she have chosen to structure the novel in the way she did?
6. What about the book's ending? Sad, yes, but satisfying? Does Trevor become a martyr? Would you have preferred a different ending?
7. The figure of Chris, the journalist, and his role in the Movement is curious. Given our media culture, would Trevor's Pay-it-Forward plan have become a Movement without media attention? Will people recognize the inherent goodness of something, give it significance, unless it's surrounded by hype or media saturation? (A cynical, but perhaps an important, question.) Can you find examples either way?
8. If you were asked to come up with a project to make the world a better place...what ideas would you come up with?
9. Do you personally follow the Pay-it-Forward philosophy? Does this book inspire you—make you more aware of what you, individually, or all of us, collectively, could do—to improve the world?
10. Is this a religious book?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War
Karl Marlantes, 2010
Grove/Atlantic Press
600 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802119285
Summary
Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and James Jones’s The Thin Red Line.
It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.
Written by a highly decorated Marine veteran over the course of thirty years, Matterhorn is a spellbinding and unforgettable novel that brings to life an entire world—both its horrors and its thrills—and seems destined to become a classic of combat literature. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1945
• Where—Seaside, Oregon, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.A., Oxford University
(Rhodes Scholar)
• Currently—lives in Woodinville, Washington, USA
Karl Marlantes is the author of Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, a New York Times Top 10 Bestseller published in 2010. The New York Times declared Matterhorn "one of the most profound and devastating novels ever to come out of Vietnam." Matterhorn received the 2011 Washington State Book Award in the Fiction category.
The novel is based on Marlantes' experiences in the Vietnam War, where he served as a lieutenant and received various meritorious service awards from the United States Marine Corps. Marlantes first received a National Merit Scholarship to attend Yale University and was then a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. The decorations he was awarded while serving in the Marines include the Navy Cross, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts and ten Air Medals.
Marlantes was awarded the Navy Cross for an action in Vietnam in which he, as a company commander, led an assault on a North Vietnamese bunker complex on a hilltop. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Chapter after chapter, battle after battle, Marlantes pushes you through what may be one of the most profound and devastating novels ever to come out of Vietnam—or any war. It's not a book so much as a deployment, and you will not return unaltered.... Matterhorn is a raw, brilliant account of war that may well serve as a final exorcism for one of the most painful passages in American history.
Sebastian Junger - New York Times Book Review
Ironically, the best parts of Matterhorn aren't the battle scenes,... rather it is Marlantes's treatment of pre-combat tension and rear-echelon politics. It's these in-between spaces that create the real terror of Matterhorn: military and racial politics; fragging that threatens the unit with implosion; and night watch in the jungle, where tigers are as dangerous as the NVA. Given the long list of stellar works, fiction and nonfiction, to come from the Vietnam experience, one might question what more can be said about it. In some ways Matterhorn isn't new at all, but it reminds us of the horror of all war by laying waste to romantic notions and napalming the cool factor of video games and "Generation Kill."
David Masiel - Washington Post
Thirty years in the making, Marlantes’s epic debut is a dense, vivid narrative spanning many months in the lives of American troops in Vietnam as they trudge across enemy lines, encountering danger from opposing forces as well as on their home turf. Marine lieutenant and platoon commander Waino Mellas is braving a 13-month tour in Quang-Tri province, where he is assigned to a fire-support base and befriends Hawke, older at 22; both learn about life, loss, and the horrors of war. Jungle rot, leeches dropping from tree branches, malnourishment, drenching monsoons, mudslides, exposure to Agent Orange, and wild animals wreak havoc as brigade members face punishing combat and grapple with bitterness, rage, disease, alcoholism, and hubris. A decorated Vietnam veteran, the author clearly understands his playing field (including military jargon that can get lost in translation), and by examining both the internal and external struggles of the battalion, he brings a long, torturous war back to life with realistic characters and authentic, thrilling combat sequences. Marlantes’s debut may be daunting in length, but it remains a grand, distinctive accomplishment.
Publishers Weekly
Even as the Vietnam War recedes into the past, the despair, confusion, and mythology it generated retains a grip on our culture. Debut novelist Marlantes offers a realistic, in-the-trenches look at that war. Matterhorn is a remote jungle base of operations held by the marines. We follow a young reserve lieutenant, Waino Mellas, as he nervously begins command of a squad ordered to take out a North Vietnamese machine gun nest; afterward, the squad is sent into the jungle for obscure reasons. This is the beginning of a long and murderous journey, with little food or water, constant rain, impassable terrain, and enemy ambushes. The soldiers bond with one another, but their faults and divisions are magnified, as racial tensions mount and cultural differences are revealed. The battle scenes, at which the author excels, are frequent, brutal, and viscerally energetic, and the skillfully rendered dialog reveals a bunch of strangers attempting to communicate in life-defeating circumstances. In the end, there are no real victors. Verdict: Obviously not a brief, cheery read, this is a major work that will be a valuable addition to any permanent collection. —Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta
Library Journal
An ambitious first novel about the Vietnam War, written over three decades by a Marine veteran of the fight. Less melodramatic and more realistic than Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke, with which it invites comparison, Marlantes's long but simply structured narrative recounts the unhappy lot of a Marine lieutenant, usually called only Mellas, and the platoon under his command. Stuck in a firebase called Matterhorn, up near the Demilitarized Zone, Mellas, who is handsome, smart, canny and politically astute, if perhaps not a "natural hunter," finds himself in the unenviable position of having what seems like the entire army of North Vietnam bearing down on the post. The long battle that ensues, framing the book, tests the Marines' mettle, and it fells many of them. Marlantes, who saw combat, writes with authority on every aspect of Marine life, from the terrible chow (in one fine moment, he describes an improbable meal made of eggs, chocolate, Tabasco sauce and apricots) to the complex rules ("Bullshit, sir!...I'm a fucking squad leader and squad leaders can have stashes") and the hard realities of Vietnam, from the fragging of unpopular brass and NCOs to death in all kinds of unpleasant ways ("Imagine dying of thirst in a monsoon"). The combat scenes, and there are many, are finely rendered. Overall, the narrative is a little predictable, however, and it offers only a few surprises of character development and plot that can't be seen coming from afar, including a tense, expertly delivered moment in which Mellas attempts to snipe at an NVA colonel: "Mellas waited as patiently as an animal. Time stopped. Only this one task. Wait for the bastard to turn around so he could see the bullets coming."Readable and well written, though not quite in the class of Tim O'Brien, Philip Caputo, Michael Herr, Robert Stone and other top-flight literary chroniclers of the war in Vietnam.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Do you believe that Mallory’s headaches were real? Was he a “malingering coward”? Hawke agreed with Cassidy that he was a malingerer, but Mellas felt differently (maybe he was “out here too long”...they “kept sending him back” (p. 453). Why do you think Mellas felt that way? Was it political? China despised Mallory (p. 218) and wanted to tell him to act like a man, but he knew that the “headaches” would help him further his “cause.” Did racial attitudes play a role in the treatment, analysis, and perception of the headaches?
2. Mellas asks Hawke shortly after they meet whether he has “had racial problems here in the company.” Hawke answers, “Naw, not really” (p. 29). Is Hawke downplaying the problem, or is his belief rooted in something else?
3. Mellas refers to the “political implications” of Parker’s hair being too long. He also wonders about the timing of this enforcement of military etiquette. What are the political implications of the incipient “afro”? Do you think the situation should have been handled differently? How? Did Cassidy’s involvement (after wanting to string his “ass...up to the nearest fucking tree”) exacerbate the situation? What choices did the officers have?
4. The author states that “the secret could be revealed only by crawling into the jungle and meeting it there” (p. 85). Do you think it is possible for “the secret” to be revealed, and if so, what might it be? Relate this to Hippy’s looking for “something out there for us to be here,” for “just anything... so it all made sense” (p. 113). Does Mellas’s assertion that, for the uninitiated, “the bush should, and would, remain a mystery” (p. 538) relate to this question?
5. What compelled Vancouver to “take point” every time, despite the fact that it “scared him” (p. 199)? Why was he considered the soul of the company? Consider also when the company was forty feet above the river, Vancouver “without being told...wrapped the rope around his waist, walked out backward over the edge, and disappeared” (p. 236).
6. Why do you think that it was so important for Mellas to recover Vancouver’s sword?
7. How, and to what extent, do you think race influenced Mellas’s decision to select Jackson as squad leader? Do you believe that he could be characterized as Mellas’s “nigger”? Why did Mellas finally tell Jackson that “he blew it” when they conducted their honest discussion on race (p. 433)?
8. Hawke’s tin (pear can) cup—which had been with him “since I got here”—was considered to contain the “ever flowing source of all that’s good and the cure of all ills.” It induced smiles and was characterized as “sweet and good.” What is the significance of the tin can cup? How is it similar to Vancouver’s sword, and why were they both so important to Mellas?
9. Do you think that Simpson is a sympathetic character? Did he drink because he felt the “responsibility for a lot of lives”? Do you believe that he put soldiers at risk to further his career and to “move his little pins in the map” (p. 170)?
10. What do you think of Anne’s attitude toward Mellas’s commitment to honor his “sacred oath to the president”? (Recall that Anne reminded him that he had considered the president a “manufactured image”). Do you agree with Anne that Mellas had a “weird concept of morality” (p. 207) that compelled him to keep that promise? Should he have consulted her, and do you think it would have changed his decision? Do you think that Mellas’s belief that she really never wanted to see him again was accurate (p. 330)? How do you feel about Anne’s behavior the night he came to see her before he shipped out? To what extent do you think the cultural and political climate was responsible for her reaction?
11. Mellas expressed some bitterness toward women and even admits to really hating “women at some level” (p. 210). How much do you think his experience with Anne accounts for this? Hawke also “hurt badly” because his woman was opposed to the war. Do these women fundamentally misunderstand the men? Do they simply have a different outlook? Mellas also longs for a woman to reach the “lost, lonely part of him.” Later, he finds himself wanting to “merge” with Karen after she recovers Vancouver’s sword (p. 522) and talked to him as a real “human being who cared” (p. 512). How do you reconcile this with the bitterness? Do you think that the absence of women from their daily lives engendered and sustained this bitterness?
12. Why did Hawke consider Mellas a “politician” (pp. 12, 282, 451)? Do you think Hawke felt that it was a positive characteristic? What might it have to do with his belief that modern war had become too technical and too complex—and Vietnam in particular had become “too political” (p. 13)?
13. Mellas experienced “overwhelming joy” and was “overflowing with an emotion that he could only describe as love” when he was reunited with his platoon. As they began to engage in the ensuing battle, he was “frightened beyond any fear”—a “brilliant and intense fear,” which helped to “push him over a barrier whose existence he had not known until this moment,” and he surrendered himself completely to the “god of war within him” (p. 351). What attributes would you give to this “god of war”? What else might it represent? Are the fear and surrender instinctive reactions to an intense confrontation with mortality? Is the god of war a protector or an evil creation of man (“participation in evil was a result of being human...without man there would be no evil” or good) (p. 500)?
14. While Mellas was retrieving Pollini and they rolled downhill, he hopes “with every roll” that “it was Pollini and not him who would catch the bullet” (p. 354). Do you think that his guilt over that hope, his wish for a medal, and the KP discharge, contributed to the thought that he had inadvertently killed Pollini? “The fact that Pollini was dead didn’t make the desire for a medal wrong, did it? What’s fucking wrong with wanting a medal? Why did Mellas think it was bad? Why was he so confused? How did he get this way? From where did he dredge up all these doubts? Why?” (p. 361).
15. Mellas’s existential crisis (pp. 398-400) when he saw himself as a “collection of empty events that would end as a faded photograph above his parents’ fireplace” and perceived that his worth was “the joke,” resulted in comforting and calming him. What contributed to this new insight? Was it a successful breakthrough on the guilt he felt over Pollini? Did he really know “beyond any ability to lie to himself” that he had killed Pollini, or would he “carry this doubt with him forever” (p. 359)?
16. What do you think Mellas believed about the value of a medal? Do you think he may have ultimately shared Hawke’s feeling that “they don’t seem so fucking shiny...when you see what they cost”? Do you think that Mellas’s ambivalence toward medals is overcome in the end?
17. What made Hawke leave his post without permission to return to his company who were surrounded by the NVA?
18. Following the last assault on Matterhorn, Mellas’s mind is “filled with troubling images....Hippy, crippled. The insane pushing. The stupidity. The blood pumping from the new machine gunner’s leg. Jacob’s throat. For what? Where was the meaning?” (p 489). How much do you think the answer to this question explains why the author wrote the book? Does the act of writing (and the art of the novel) involve creating meaning that can make us feel and change? Were your attitudes and feelings about the Vietnam War and war in general transformed by the experience of reading this book?
19. After thinking about how “brave and wise” he realized Janc had been when he defused a volatile racial situation, what makes China “know” that it would be impossible for Janc to be his friend (p. 313)?
20. The youth of the soldiers is repeatedly emphasized by the author. He references “dead American teenagers” and “dead Vietnamese teenagers” (p. 491). “Two bodies not on the planet twenty years, one living and one dead” are poignantly airlifted away (p. 238). When Fracasso entered to lead a platoon, Mellas “knew” that what “three teenagers” decided in the next five seconds could mean Fracasso’s career and maybe even his life (p. 269). Considering that Fitch (Company Commander) was twenty-three, Hawke (Executive Officer) twenty-two, and Mellas (Platoon Commander) twenty-one, and many (if not most) grunts (Hippy) were eighteen and (Janc and Jackson) nineteen, how did you feel about the relative youth of the characters as you read? Does this recognition of young people fighting and dying for a policy they have had little or no influence over change your outlook on the Vietnam War, a draft, or war in general?
21. Why do you think Mellas said that killing the injured enemy would “be murder” (p. 256)? Do you think the fact that he “glimpsed the grimace of pain and fear” followed by crying that “cut through Mellas like a shaft of steel” is what made him pause? Why did he switch off his safety—point his gun at the kid’s head, then switch the safety back on and say “We can’t”? Do you think it was because he “didn’t have the guts”? Is that why he later started sobbing and saying to Hawke and Fitch, “I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry”? Who do you think he was apologizing to and for what?
22. Vietnam veterans were stigmatized by the failure to distinguish between a foreign policy and the soldiers serving the government (and its citizens) by executing the policy faithfully. How much do you think this book has helped you to understand this and empathize with those who served? The author has spoken of the “wound of misunderstanding” delivered by those who directed their antiwar feelings at those who fought the war. His hope is to be understood and to bridge the chasm that has divided America. Do you think this book has helped to do that? How?
23. What do you feel was the most emotional event in the book? Why did it affect you so deeply?
24. SEMPER FI (“Always Faithful”) Mellas recalls a discussion “at his eating club with his friends and their dates one night after a dance. They were talking about the stupidity of warriors and their “silly codes of honor” (p. 324). As he watched Marines run across a landing zone “running possibly to their deaths,” he realized that “something had changed” and that meaning and life would be given to the “silly code of honor.” What changed? What does this code mean to you? Did your attitude toward the code change after reading the book? Does loyalty and commitment transcend race and class? How?
25. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - "It is glorious and honorable to die for one's country."
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
—from “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen died fighting in World War One when he was twenty-five. What do you think Mellas would have thought of the idea that it was an old lie that it was glorious and honorable to die for one’s country? Explore the conflict and contradictions involved in fulfilling a civic obligation, honoring a sacred oath, or following one’s conscience. If you witness your brothers and sisters fighting and dying for a cause you do not believe in, what choices do you have and on what basis do you make them?
26. Mellas substitutes “Bravo” for “Christ” in a modified and drunken mystery of faith formulation (“Bravo has died, Bravo is risen, Bravo will fight again” p 556). He raises a glass (consecration) above his head and says “Mea Culpa” (Confiteor/confession of sins). Hawke follows by “solemnly” making the sign of the cross and saying “Absolution.” (The Catholic encyclopedia defines absolution partly as “that act of the priest whereby, in the Sacrament of Penance, he frees man from sin. It presupposes on the part of the penitent, contrition, confession.”)
Mellas then invokes the saying (Dulce et decorum…) in a mock religious ceremony (p. 556) and “anoints those around him with ceremonial movements” while chanting the latin phrase. Hawke “knelt down” and McCarthy “solemnly” offered him communion.
What do you think the author is suggesting here? Are “the Colonel, the “three” and the do-nothing Congress” (trinity) (p. 556) the ones who must bear the guilt for the “sins” of war? Are the soldiers absolving themselves and thereby recognizing the glory and honor in what they did?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
A Free Man of Color: (Benjamin January series #1)
Barbara Hambly, 1997
Random House
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553575262
Summary
Benjamin January has lately returned to New Orleans from Paris, where he's made his home for the last 16 years. In Paris, January was a surgeon; in New Orleans, his life is constrained by a rigid set of rules that control his every move. He is known as a "free man of color," but in 1833, that freedom is tenuous at best.
January has found a position playing piano at the Salle d'Orleans, where the Blue Ribbon Ball of this year's Carnival caps the season's revelry. The Blue Ribbon Ball, in New Orleans's strict caste system, is the quadroon ball, where the light-skinned, beautiful daughters of colored society dance with their white "protectors"—while their protectors' wives and families are at the subscription ball in the Theatre next door. From the safety of his piano bench, January is able to watch and comment upon the goings-on. But that detachment doesn't last.
The most beautiful—and the most poisonous—belle of the ball, the infamous Angelique Crozat, has infuriated everyone present, from the young suitor whose stutter she has publicly mocked, to the girls whose dresses she has purposefully made somewhat less than beautiful—including the widow of her late protector, who has violated every caste rule in order to confront her.
When Angelique is discovered, in a parlor of the Salle, strangled to death, January becomes embroiled in a pursuit of the killer—only to discover that the authorities are investigating him. Now he must run for his life, and find the culprit before he is caught and enslaved—or hung. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 28, 1951
• Born—San Diego, California, USA
• Raised—Montclair, California
• Education—University of California, Riverside
• Awards—Locus Award for Best Horror Novel; Lord Ruthven
Award for fiction
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Barbara Hambly is an award winning and prolific American novelist and screenwriter within the genres of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction. Her writing includes novels occurring within worlds of her own creation (generally occurring within an explicit multiverse), as well as within previously existing mythos (notably Star Trek and Star Wars).
Hambly was born in San Diego, California and grew up in Montclair, California. Her parents, Edward Everett Hambly Sr. and Florence Moraski Hambly, are from a coal-mining town in eastern Pennsylvania. She has an older sister, Mary Ann Sanders, and a younger brother, Edward Everett Hambly Jr. In her early teens, Hambly read and was transfixed by J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and affixed images of dragons to her bedroom door. She early-on became interested in costumery, and has been a long-time participant in Society for Creative Anachronism activities. In the mid-1960s, the Hambly family spent a year in Australia.
Hambly has a Masters in Medieval History from the University of California at Riverside, completing her degree in 1975 and spending a year in Bordeaux as part of her studies. Her first novel to be published was Time of the Dark in 1982 by Del Rey. Previous to becoming a writer, Hambly chose occupations that allowed her time to write; all of her novels contain a biography paragraph with a litany of jobs familiar to her readers—high school teacher, model, waitress, technical editor, all-night liquor store clerk, and Shotokan karate instructor. Hambly served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 1994 to 1996. Her works have been nominated for many awards in the fantasy and horror fiction categories, winning a Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, Those Who Hunt the Night (1989) (released in the UK as Immortal Blood) and the Lord Ruthven award for fiction for its sequel, Travelling With the Dead (1996).
Hambly was married for some years to fellow science fiction writer George Alec Effinger before his death in 2002. She now lives in Los Angeles. Hambly speaks freely of suffering from seasonal affective disorder, which was undiagnosed for years.
Fantasy
Given Hambly's diverse portfolio, there are only a few themes that run throughout all of her novels.
She has a penchant for unusual characters within the fantasy genre, such as the menopausal witch and reluctant scholar-lord in the Winterlands trilogy, or philologist secret service agent in the vampire novels.
Her writing is filled with rich descriptions and actors whose actions bear consequences for both their lives and relationships, suffusing her series with a sense of loss and regret; Hambly's characters experience the pain of frustrated aspirations to a degree that is uncommon in most fantasy novels.
Though using many standard clichés and plot devices of the fantasy genre, her works depart from the norm through an exploration of the ethical implications of the consequences of these devices, and what their impact is for the characters, were they real people. In avoiding the "...easy consolatory self-identification of genre fantasy" (p. 449) and refusing to let her work be guided more explicitly by conventions and the desires of her audience, Hambly may have missed out on the remunerative success and acclaim that she is due.
Although magic exists in many of her settings, it is not used as an easy solution but follows rules and takes energy from the wizards. The unusual settings are generally rationalized as alternative universes.
Hambly heavily researches her settings, either in person or through books, frequently drawing upon her degree in medieval history for background and depth.
Benjamin January Mysteries
The series, beginning with A Free Man of Color, follows Benjamin January, a brilliant, classically educated free colored surgeon and musician living in New Orleans during the belle epoque of the 1830s, when New Orleans had a large and prosperous free colored demimonde. January was born a slave but freed as a young child and provided with an excellent education; he is fluent in several classical and modern languages and thoroughly versed in the whole of classical Western learning and arts. Although trained in Paris as a surgeon, he has returned to Louisiana to escape the memory of his dead Parisian wife. As he is a very dark-skinned black man, in Louisiana he cannot find work as a surgeon. Instead, he earns a modest living by his exceptional talent and skill as a musician.
Each title is an entertaining murder mystery with a complex plot and well-developed characters, and each explores many aspects of French Creole society. However, most tend to emphasize some particular element of antebellum Louisiana life, such as Voodoo religion (Graveyard Dust), opera and music (Die Upon a Kiss), the annual epidemics of yellow fever and malaria (Fever Season), fear of miscegenation (Dead and Buried), or the harsh nature of commercial sugar production (Sold Down the River). (Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
In her breakout from fantasy and Star Wars novels, Hambly (Mother of Winter) chronicles the adventures of piano teacher and surgeon Ben January, a free man of color. The setting, 1833 New Orleans, is vivid and ornate. Riverboat dandies and roughshod frontiermen rub elbows with dueling gentlemen of the landed aristocracy as their splendidly gowned wives and colored mistresses celebrate Mardi Gras, oblivious to the squalor, fever and plague around them. Social and sexual mores are lax. Racial bigotry is the norm in a society that classifies people according to an elaborate scale of color and bloodline (octoroon, quadroon, musterfino, etc.). The plot is a whodunit involving the murder of Angelique Crozat, a beautiful but grasping octoroon who was the ex-mistress of a recently deceased Creole (white) planter. Back home after 16 years in Paris, January intervenes on behalf of Madeleine Dubonnet, a former piano student recently widowed by Arnaud Trepagier, the murdered woman's former patron. For his trouble, the ebony-skinned January becomes an unwitting scapegoat of the influential white suspects. Menaced by ruthless cutthroats, he must risk his freedom to absolve himself. Hambly pays rich attention to period detail fashion, food, manners, music and voodoo. Her characters, however, speak and think with decidedly modern accents, a departure from period verisimilitude that's easily justified on grounds of rhythm and pace. The tale lacks some of the moral gravity implied by the title, but it works as an escapist entertainment flavored liberally with the sights, textures, sounds and tastes of a decadent city in a distant time.
Publishers Weekly
With this historical novel, Hambly departs from her usual work in the sf/fantasy genre (e.g., Traveling with the Dead). Her new work is set in 19th-century Louisiana Creole society, where it was customary for a man to have a wife and also to keep a mistress in her own house. Benjamin January, a free Creole with dark brown skin, has returned to this society after living in Paris for more than a decade. He is trained as a surgeon, but in Louisiana, he makes his living playing the piano. Soon he is the main suspect in the death of a wealthy man's young mistress, found murdered at a ball. January spends the rest of the book gathering evidence in his defense with the help of his sisters and a host of other colorful characters he encounters on the run. The result is a complicated mystery that could have used more romantic involvement. —Shirley Coleman, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
A few suspenseful moments notwithstanding, this isn't an action-packed or suspenseful whodunit. Rather, it's a richly detailed, telling portrait of an intricately structured racial hierarchy, which was to leave its mark on everyone—from Ben January to the white woman whose life he ultimately saves. —Stephanie Zvirin
Booklist
Once again exercising her talent for gold stained description, Hambly moves from a stylish fin de siècle tale of Continental vampirism (Traveling with the Dead, 1995) to an equally stylish romantic suspenser set in New Orleans. The author focuses on the delicate, twilit world of color in New Orleans in the 1830s, striving to capture both the city's exotic strangeness and an absolute sense of physical reality. Despite rapt storytelling, though, Hambly's prose shows less care than her research, being replete with tired phrases ("crimson with rage," etc.). After 16 years abroad, widower Benjamin January, a very dark Creole, returns from Paris having earned his degree as a physician and, for Carnival, takes up playing piano in the band for the Blue Ribbon Ball at the Salle d'Orleans. This is the ball at which white gentlemen meet their mistresses of various skin shades, having parked their wives at the nearby Theatre d'Orleans. When Benjamin spots a former piano student, the virtuous, newly widowed, pure white Madame Madeleine Trepagier (nee Dubonnet), at the wrong ball, he tries to save her from disgrace. She's there to recover her family jewels from the city's worst, most malicious woman of color, Angelique Crozat, mistress of the late Armand Trepagier. But Angelique is strangled, robbed, and stuffed into a closet before Madeleine can talk with her. The murder investigation plunges us into the tangled nature of race relations in New Orleans, made even more complex by the fact that the free colored folk there now have to deal with the recently arrived imperial Americans, who don't recognize (as the French, the founders of the city, did) a colored entitlement to civil rights. What does it mean that the dead Angelique was wearing Madeleine's own handsewn white dress when she died? A sharp portrait of curiously nuanced class divisions transforms Hambly's latest into something far more than the modest melodrama it might otherwise have been.
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)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for A Free Man of Color:
1. What is the significance of the book's title? In what way is it ironic?
2. What does Benjamin January find when he returns to America from Paris? For a man of color, how does Parisian culture differ from New Orleans culture? Has America changed in Benjamin's 16-year absence...or has he been changed by Europe?
3. Why is it important to the novel's plot that Benjamin be an outsider? As a writer, why might Barbara Hambly have placed him in Paris for 16 years prior to the beginning of the story?
4. In what ways do the newly arrived Americans differ from the older residents of New Orleans in their treatment of African-Americans.
5. Talk about the social hierarchy among people of color in New Orleans. What is the terminology used to describe those social distinctions?
6. Are you appalled by the quadroon balls—and the practice, commonplace among wealthy Creole men, of keeping a mistress? How precarious a life is it for the "placee"? How would you feel as the wife left on the plantation?
7. What made Angelique Crozat the most feared—and despised—mistress in New Orleans? What gave her power? What social code does Madame Madeleine violate in attending the quadroon ball to confron Angelique?
8. How and why is the murder evidence manipulated so that it points to Benjamin?
9. In mystery stories, clues are slowly revealed and sometimes lead readers (and characters) astray; twists and turns confound our expectations and serve to build suspense. As a mystery, does this novel deliver? Is it a suspenseful page-turner? Is the ending predictable...or surprising?
10. Are you more intrigued by the historical milieu—social and political—that Barbara Hambly limns for us or by the mystery itself? Which aspect of the novel was more gripping for you—Benjamin's predicament, as a good man caught in an evil world, or bringing Angelique's killer to justice?
11. Does the author do a good job of bringing antebellum New Orleans to life? Has she created a near palpable experience of time and place? What about her characters? Do you find them convincing and well-developed...or shallow and not particularly believable?
12. This is the first installment in the Benjamin January series. Does this book make you want to read the others? Why/why not?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Peace Like a River
Leif Enger, 2001
Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
312 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802139252
Summary
Born with no air in his lungs, it was only when Reuben Land's father, Jeremiah, picked him up and commanded him to breathe that Reuben's lungs filled.
Reuben struggles with debilitating asthma from then on, making him a boy who knows firsthand that life is a gift, and also one who suspects that his father is touched by God and can overturn the laws of nature.
The quiet 1960's midwestern life of the Lands is upended when Reuben's brother Davy kills two marauders who have come to harm the family.
The morning of his sentencing, Davy—a hero to some, a cold-blooded murderer to others—escapes from his cell, and the Lands set out in search of him. Their journey is touched by serendipity and the kindness of strangers, and they cover territory far more extraordinary than even the Badlands where they search for Davy from their Airstream trailer.
Sprinkled with playful nods to Biblical tales, beloved classics such as Huckleberry Finn, the adventure stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, and the westerns of Zane Grey, Peace Like A River is at once a heroic quest, a tragedy, a love story, and a haunting meditation on the possibility of magic in the everyday world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1961
• Where—Sauk Centre, Minnesota, USA
• Education—Moorhead State University
• Currently—lives near Aitkin, Minnesota
Since his teens, Leif Enger has wanted to write fiction. He worked as a reporter and producer for Minnesota Public Radio from 1984 until the sale of Peace Like a River to publisher Grove/Atlantic allowed him to take time off to write.
In the early 1990s, he and his older brother, Lin, writing under the pen name L.L. Enger, produced a series of mystery novels featuring a retired baseball player.
Peace Like a River, published in 2001, has been described as "high-spirited and unflagging" and has received some notable acclaim in literary circles. His second novel, So Brave, Young, and Handsome is the story of an aging train robber's quest for self-discovery. Published in 2008, it received has excellent reviews. In 2018 Enger released Virgil Wander, a midwestern twist on magical realism about a town—and its inhabitants—struggling for a new lease on life.
Enger is married and lives on a farm in Minnesota with his wife. They have two sons. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Set in the early 1960s, Enger's debut novel is narrated by eleven-year-old Reuben Land, an asthmatic boy whose close-knit family is broken apart after the oldest son, Davy, commits a crime of passion and becomes a fugitive. Reuben, his father and younger sister become immersed in a series of mystical events as they follow Davy's trail across the northern United States. Enger's book is filled with biblical illusions and miracles crowd its pages like proverbial angels on the head of a pin; one curious scene features a pot of soup that replenishes itself in loaves-and-fishes fashion. The highlight of the book is its engaging narrator, Reuben Land: He's funny, endearing and committed to his family, no matter how wrong their actions.
David Abrams - Book Magazine
Dead for 10 minutes before his father orders him to breathe in the name of the living God, Reuben Land is living proof that the world is full of miracles. But it's the impassioned honesty of his quiet, measured narrative voice that gives weight and truth to the fantastic elements of this engrossing tale. From the vantage point of adulthood, Reuben tells how his father rescued his brother Davy's girlfriend from two attackers, how that led to Davy being jailed for murder and how, once Davy escapes and heads south for the Badlands of North Dakota, 12-year-old Reuben, his younger sister Swede and their janitor father light out after him. But the FBI is following Davy as well, and Reuben has a part to play in the finale of that chase, just as he had a part to play in his brother's trial. It's the kind of story that used to be material for ballads, and Enger twines in numerous references to the Old West, chiefly through the rhymed poetry Swede writes about a hero called Sunny Sundown. That the story is set in the early '60s in Minnesota gives it an archetypal feel, evoking a time when the possibility of getting lost in the country still existed. Enger has created a world of signs, where dead crows fall in a snowstorm and vagrants lie curled up in fields, in which everything is significant, everything has weight and comprehension is always fleeting. This is a stunning debut novel, one that sneaks up on you like a whisper and warms you like a quilt in a North Dakota winter, a novel about faith, miracles and family that is, ultimately, miraculous.
Publishers Weekly
(Audio Version.) The cover, though beautiful, seems better suited for a reissue of Robin Hood or Camelot. And the reader's claim to fame is his role as an HIV-positive artist on the TV series Life Goes On. So what makes this an great audiobook? Two things: careful, thoughtful writing by Enger and passionate, spirited reading by Lowe. This is a graceful, stirring first novel, with echoes of To Kill a Mockingbird and classic Americana at its heart. Eleven-year-old Reuben Land lives a typically calm existence in a small Midwestern town; beyond having an extraordinary father (who performs quiet miracles), he's a pretty average boy. When two neighborhood bullies threaten his older brother, Davy, and his younger sister, Swede, life takes on a dark edge. The conflict escalates after Davy shoots the two boys dead, is in jail awaiting trial and escapes. Reuben, Swede and their widowed father take off in search of Davy, moving across the striking landscape of Minnesota and South Dakota. Their search ultimately leads them to make a very important decision, one that challenges their own morals and familial bonds. Enger's characters are exceptionally strong, and Lowe deftly portrays them: Swede's chutzpah, Reuben's reverence for his family, and their father's magic are all admirably expressed.
Publishers Weekly
Fair or not, Enger's first novel will inevitably be compared to the work of Garrison Keillor: both men are veterans of Minnesota Public Radio, and the book very much shares the spirit of Keillor's radio work and fiction, with its quiet, observant gaze capturing the beauty of simple things, related through wise and thoughtful characters—in this case, the Land family from North Dakota. Asthmatic youngster Reuben Land tells the admittedly shaggy-dog story of his older brother Davy, who shoots and kills two violent intruders as they break into the family's home; Davy is convicted but manages to flee. Both the Lands and the law follow in hot pursuit, but the family seems to have support from a higher power. Father Jeremiah himself has performed a miracle or two in his lifetime (walking on water, healing the afflicted with his touch, and the like). Biblical allusions abound, and fantastic things happen, such as the patriarch's four-mile tour via tornado. "Make of it what you will," says Reuben. A low-key charmer for literary collections. —Marc Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., PA
Library Journal
Minnesotan Enger pulls out the stops in this readable albeit religiously correct debut about a family with a father who may be touched by God and a son by the Devil. Jeremiah Land's wife left him years ago, and now, in a midwestern town called Roofing, in 1962 or so, he's janitor at the local school and sole parent of chronically asthmatic Reuben, 11 and the tale's teller; his precocious sister Swede, only 9 and already an accomplished poet of western outlaw-romances; and Davy, who at 17 becomes a killer—though possibly a just one. Two town boys from the wrong side of the tracks have a grudge against custodian Jeremiah (he caught them in the girls' locker room) and, after vowing revenge (and briefly kidnapping Swede), they appear one night in the upstairs of the Land house, whereupon Davy (did he lure them there?) bravely and determinedly shoots them dead. There's a trial, a conviction—and then a jailbreak as Davy escapes, not to be seen for some months. Miraculous? Well, Reuben has seen his father walk on air ("Make of it what you will," he advises the reader), and now there's a miraculous meal (a pot of soup is bottomless), the miracle of the family's being left an Airstream trailer—even the miracle of Jeremiah being fired, leaving the family free to take to the road after Davy. The direction they go (toward the Badlands), how they avoid the police, what people they meet (including a future wife for Jeremiah), how they find handsome Davy—all depend on what may or may not constitute miracle, subtle or wondrous, including the suspenseful events leading to a last gunfight and the biggest miracle of all (preceded by a glimpse of heaven), all followed by certain rearrangements among the lives of mortals. Handsomely written, rich with the feel and flavor of the plains—and suited mainly for those whose yearnings are in the down-home, just-folks style of the godly.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. As the novel begins—indeed, as the very life of this novel's narrator begins—a miracle happens. Describe it. How does it happen? Who accomplishes it? Begin your discussion of this book by recounting the major and minor miracles that occur throughout. What role do they play in Peace Like a River?
2. Born with a severe case of asthma, Reuben Land, our young hero and narrator, must often struggle to bring air into his lungs. Throughout the book, Reuben is preoccupied with his own breathing, and the act of breathing functions in this story as a metaphor for life itself. How does Reuben cope with his ailment, and how is his character influenced by it? Provide instances where breathing takes on special meaning in the narrative.
3. Consider the details of the double homicide committed by Davy, Reuben's older brother. Does Reuben see Davy as a murderer, or as one who acted in self-defense? Does he want Davy brought to justice, or does he think justice has already been served? What about the other main characters: how do they feel? And what about you, the reader? How was your impression of Davy—and of this novel—influenced by his actions? Discuss how the novel explores the idea of loyalty.
4. Peace Like a River is set mainly in rural Minnesota and the Badlands of North Dakota during the early 1960s. Like early American pioneers, or perhaps like mythic heroes, the Lands set out to rescue one of their own amidst the beauty and cruelty of the natural world. How does the Land family contend with this raw, uncivilized, and sometimes brutal landscape? Identify events or circumstances in which the novel's setting contributes to its elemental or mythic quality.
5. Swede, Reuben's imaginative, prolific, and precocious younger sister, creates an epic poem about a cowboy named Sunny Sundown. Talk about Sunny's ongoing saga as an ironic commentary on Reuben's larger narrative. What are the parallels?
6. Besides the Sunny Sundown text, several other outlaw tales, literary allusions, biblical legends, and historical asides are offered—by Swede or by Reuben himself. Identify a few of these stories-within-the-story, explaining how each enriches or influences the main narrative.
7. Discuss the character of Jeremiah Land, Reuben's father—and the center of his moral compass. What are Jeremiah's strengths, as a person and a parent? Does he have any weaknesses? Why did his wife leave him, all those years ago? And why does he "heal" the grotesque employer who fires him (p. 80)? Explain how the novel's dual themes of familial love and ardent faith are met in this character.
8. Both during Davy's trial and after his escape from prison, we encounter a variety of public viewpoints on what Reuben's brother has done. Such viewpoints, usually presented as personal letters or newspaper editorials, are always steadfast yet often contradictory. What does Reuben seem to realize about the so-called "court of public opinion," in light of these viewpoints?
9. Prayer is described in many ways, and on many occasions, in Peace Like a River. Reading this book, did you discover anything about the activity of, reasons for, or consequences of prayer? What larger points—about religion and human nature, say—might the author be making with his varied depictions of people at prayer? For instance, when remembering a prayer he said that included blessings for even his enemies, Reuben comments thus regarding Jape Waltzer: "Later I would wish I'd spent more time on him particularly" (p. 285). Why does Reuben feel this way? What power does he recognize in his own prayers? Discuss the impact prayer has on Reuben, and how it transforms him.
10. Recovering from a near-fatal asthmatic collapse, Reuben muses: "The infirm wait always, and know it" (p. 290). Given Reuben's physical condition, and given what we know about his ancestry and the story at hand, what is Reuben "waiting" for? How is his waiting resolved? Can this analogy be applied to any of the other characters?
11. The final miracle in Peace Like a River occurs, of course, when Jeremiah surrenders his life for Reuben. But why, at an earlier point in the story, does Reuben observe, "Since arriving at [Roxanna's] house, we'd had no miracles whatever" (p. 257). Discuss the truth and falsehood of this remark. How might Roxanna herself be seen as a miracle?
12. What does the character of Roxanna bring to the Land family? What does she provide that the Lands had lacked before her arrival? Over the course of the novel, Reuben's attitude and his physical descriptions of Roxanna change. In what ways does it change, do you think Roxanna’s attitudes toward the Lands as a family and Jeremiah as a person undergo a similar metamorphosis?
13. In "Be Jubilant, My Feet," the next-to-last chapter, Reuben and Jeremiah enter a world beyond this one. "Here in the orchard," our hero recalls, "I had a glimmer of origin: Adam, I thought" (p. 301). Where exactly are Reuben and his father? What happens to them? How have these crucial events been foreshadowed, and how are they new or unprecedented?
14. Much of this novel concerns the inner life of childhood: imagination, storytelling, chores, play, and school life. Discuss the author's portrayal of childhood. Do the children depicted here seem realistic? Why or why not?
15. Remembering his own childhood, author Leif Enger recently noted: "I grew up squinting from the backseat at gently rolling hills and true flatlands, where you could top a rise and see a tractor raising dust three miles away. So much world and sky is visible, it's hard to put much stock in your own influence." Does this type of relationship between the individual and the natural world appear in Peace Like a River? If so, where? Identify key passages or scenes where the characters seem inferior to the landscape, or even at the mercy of it.
16. Finishing his story, Reuben notes: "You should know that Jape Waltzer proved as uncatchable as Swede's own Valdez" (p. 309). What do the characters of Jape and Valdez represent in this novel? Conclude your discussion by comparing and contrasting Peace Like a River with the traditional morality play—the symbolic drama (dating back to medieval times) based on the eternal struggle between Good and Evil.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Redeeming Love
Francine Rivers, 1991
Doubleday Religious
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781590525135
Summary
Best-selling author Francine Rivers skillfully retells the biblical love story of Gomer and Hosea in a tale set against the exciting backdrop of the California Gold Rush. The heroine, Angel, is a young woman who was sold into prostitution as a child.
Michael Hosea is a godly man sent into Angel's life to draw her into the Savior's redeeming love. This remarkable novel has sold over a million copies globally and has been a fixture on the CBA bestsellers list for nearly a decade. A six-part reading guide, suitable for individual use or group discussion, is included in this best-selling novel. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1947
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., University of Nevada
• Awards—see below
• Currently—northern California
Francine Sandra Rivers is an American author of fiction with Christian themes, including inspirational romance novels. Prior to becoming a born-again Christian in 1986, Rivers wrote historical romance novels. She is best known for her inspirational novel Redeeming Love, while another novel, The Last Sin Eater has become a feature film.
Francine Rivers is the daughter of a police officer and a nurse. From the time she was a child, Rivers wanted to be a published author. She attended the University of Nevada, Reno, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and journalism. After her graduation she spent time as a newspaper reporter, writing obituaries and human interest stories.
Career
After her mother-in-law lent her several romance novels, Rivers decided that she would try to write in that genre. Her first manuscript was sold and became published in 1976. For the next several years she wrote historical romance novels.
In 1986, Rivers became a born-again Christian, and for three years she had difficulty finding plots for new novels. She spent her time instead studying the Bible, and decided to adapt her writing to focus on more Christian themes. Her first novel in the new vein, Redeeming Love, was released in 1991. Rivers considers it to be her statement of faith. Redeeming Love updates the Old Testament book of Hosea to the American West of the 1850s and tells the story of a prostitute named Angel, who is eventually reformed and converted to Christianity by the stoic patience and love of a frontier farmer named Michael Hosea.
Rivers's subsequent novels have all been in the inspirational fiction genre, as Rivers wants to "illustrate Christ and the Christian walk, to address difficult problems and write realistic stories." In a letter on her webpage Francine Rivers refers to the books written before her conversion to Christianity as her "B.C." (before Christ) bibliography. She has purchased the publication rights to her earlier romance novels so that she can prevent them from being released again, but some titles have been rereleased and others circulate in used bookstores.
Her inspirational series, The Mark of the Lion, sold over half a million copies. In 2007, her novel The Last Sin Eater was made into a feature film , directed by Michael Landon Jr. and distributed by Fox Faith.
Francine Rivers is married to Rick Rivers and they live together in northern California (where the action in many of her contemporary novels is set). They have three children: Trevor, Shannon, and Travis; and five grandchildren.
Awards
Rivers has been honored with many awards, including the Christy Award, the ECPA Gold Medallion, and the Holt Medallion. Rivers is also a member of the Romance Writers of America's Hall of Fame. She has won four RWA RITA Awards, the highest award given in romantic fiction. Her first RITA was for Best Historical Romance in 1986 for Not So Wild a Dream. Her subsequent ones, in 1995, 1996, and 1997, have been for Best Inspirational Romance. (From Wikipedia
Book Reviews
Rivers has rewritten a secular historical romance of the same name for the Christian market, and it is a splendid piece of work exploring both physical love and a love of God. Angel, a young, hardened prostitute sold into "the life" as a child, has no interest in God or religion. Then she meets Michael Hosea, a devout Christian who tells her it is his mission to save her. After being badly beaten, Angel decides to take Michael up on his offer of marriage. Eventually, she learns not only to love Michael but to love God as well. There is not one false note in this wonderful novel. The publisher's foreword rates the book "PG" for its adult themes and subplots of rape and incest. However, these are handled with great sensitivity and are very much a part of the story's development. Very highly recommended for most libraries.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. How was Sarah/Angel rejected and betrayed? What were her earliest experiences with God and/or the church?
2. What experience did Michael have with rejection or betrayal? Contrast Michael’s and Angel’s examples in coping with life’s circumstances.
3. Who else in the story suffered from rejection or betrayal, and how did they cope?
4. Which character do you identify with the most and why?
5. Describe a time when you were rejected or betrayed. To whom did you turn and why?
6. Which scene do you feel best shows how Angel was resigned to relying on no one but herself? What events caused her to do so? Why do you think she never cried out to God?
7. Contrast Michael with Angel in regard to authority.
8. Describe Miriam’s relationship with God. Why were her attitudes and beliefs so different from Angel’s?
9. On whom do you rely and why?
10. Who helped Michael escape his past? In what ways was he rescued?
11. Angel repeatedly tried to escape her circumstances. Describe the various plans.
12. Contrast Hosea, the slave who helped Michael, with the slave dealer Duke.
13. Discuss Michael’s rescue of Angel from the hand of Magowan.
14. Why do you think Angel returned to her former ways?
15. From what or whom are you trying to escape and why?
16. What causes you to return to old habits?
17. Angel was bought and sold on numerous occasions. What was different about Michael’s redeeming her? Discuss the role of trust (or lack of trust) in Angel.
18. When Michael and Angel helped the Altman family, what did Angel learn about Michael? Herself? God?
19. Describe thechanges in actions and thinking that took place after Angel was rescued a second time by Michael. What do you think caused the changes?
20. What trust issues do you have? Who has God placed in your life as positive examples?
21. What caused Angel to leave yet again?
22. How is this different from before?
23. Why was it necessary for Paul to be the one to find Angel?
24. What did he learn about himself? How did this help him?
25. What did Angel learn through this experience?
26. What was Michael learning through this difficult time?
27. Is there someone who needs to be reconciled with you? Or, do you need to be the one who does the reconciling, like Paul did? Explain.
28. What steps had Angel taken to restore her spirit?
29. What were the lasting effects of Angel’s soul search?
30. What steps did Angel take to restore her marriage? How did Michael respond?
31. In what ways did God reward Sarah and Michael?
32. What have you learned about the love of a man for a woman?
33. What have you learned about the love of God for all mankind—including you?
(Questions issued by WaterBrook Multnomah Publishers.)
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