Case Histories 
Kate Atkinson, 2004
Little, Brown & Co.
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316033480


Summary
A triumphant new novel from award-winner Kate Atkinson: a breathtaking story of families divided, love lost and found, and the mysteries of fate.

Case One: Olivia Land, youngest and most beloved of the Land girls, goes missing in the night and is never seen again. Thirty years later, two of her surviving sisters unearth a shocking clue to Olivia's disappearance among the clutter of their childhood home...

Case Two: Theo delights in his daughter Laura's wit, effortless beauty, and selfless love. But her first day as an associate in his law firm is also the day when Theo's world turns upside down...

Case Three: Michelle looks around one day and finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making. A very needy baby and a very demanding husband make her every waking moment a reminder that somewhere, somehow, she'd made a grave mistake and would spend the rest of her life paying for it—until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.

As Private Detective Jackson Brodie investigates all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge. Inextricably caught up in his clients grief, joy, and desire, Jackson finds their unshakable need for resolution very much like his own.

Kate Atkinson's celebrated talent makes for a novel that positively sparkles with surprise, comedy, tragedy, and constant, page-turning delight. (From the publisher.)

This is the first in the Jackson Brodie series, followed by One Good Turn and When Will There be Good News.

Author Bio
• Birth—1951
• Where—York, England, UK
• Education—M.A., Dundee University
• Awards—Whitbread Award; Woman's Own Short Story Award; Ian St. James Award;
   Saltire Book of the Year Award; Prix Westminster
• Currently—lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK


Kate Atkinson was born in York, and studied English Literature at the University of Dundee, gaining her Masters Degree in 1974. She subsequently studied for a doctorate in American Literature which she failed at the viva stage. During her final year of this course, she was married for the first time, although the marriage lasted only two years.

After leaving the university, she took on a variety of miscellaneous jobs from home help to legal secretary and teacher. She lived in Whitby, Yorkshire for a time, before moving to Edinburgh, where she taught at Dundee University and began writing short stories. She now lives in Edinburgh.

Writing
She initially wrote for women's magazines after winning the 1986 Woman's Own Short Story Competition. She was runner-up for the Bridport Short Story Prize in 1990 and won an Ian St James Award in 1993 for her short-story "Karmic Mothers," which she later adapted for BBC2 television as part of its Tartan Shorts series.

Atkinson's breakthrough was with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year award, ahead of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Roy Jenkins biography of William Ewart Gladstone. The book has been adapted for radio, theatre and television. She has since written several more novels, short stories and a play. Case Histories (2004) was described by Stephen King as "the best mystery of the decade." The book won the Saltire Book of the Year Award and the Prix Westminster.

Her work is often celebrated for its wit, wisdom and subtle characterisation, and the surprising twists and plot turns. Four of her novels have featured the popular former detective Jackson Brodie—Case Histories (2004), One Good Turn (2006), When Will There Be Good News (2008), and Started Early, Took My Dog (2010). She has shown that, stylistically, she is also a comic novelist who often juxtaposes mundane everyday life with fantastic magical events, a technique that contributes to her work's pervasive magic realism.

Life After Life (2013) revolves around Ursula Todd's continual birth and rebirth. Janet Maslin of the New York Times called it "a big book that defies logic, chronology and even history in ways that underscore its author's fully untethered imagination."

A God in Ruins (2015), the companion book to Life After Life, follows Ursula's brother Todd who survived the war, only to succumb to disillusionment and guilt at having survived.

Atkinson was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to literature. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
The lifelike characters in Case Histories are what make it such a compelling hybrid: part complex family drama, part mystery. It winds up having more depth and vividness than ordinary thrillers and more thrills than ordinary fiction, with a constant awareness of perils swirling beneath its surface.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


Certain characters are the stock in trade of detective novels: innocent female murder victims, embittered spinsters, wives with secrets, teenage runaways, sexy old actresses and men who feel driven to try, over and over, to protect or avenge the downtrodden. Kate Atkinson's latest novel contains all these characters, which might suggest it's just another variation on a host of well-worn themes—but, amazingly enough, this cast, as familiar as it is, still has the power to ensnare us. In fact, Case Histories is so exuberant, so empathetic, that it makes most murder-mystery page-turners feel as lifeless as the corpses they're strewn with.
Jacqueline Carey - New York Times Book Review


Breaking detective-thriller form, Case Histories is told from multiple points of view, reducing the burden on Jackson to "solve" the crimes for us and letting each character bloom in the light of the author's sharp, observant prose. That's something that the genre's hard-boiled forefathers would never have done; for them, the ratiocinative novel was a one-man job, and sympathetic characters just gummed up the works. Kate Atkinson, though, seems to have intuited that the most compelling mystery of all isn't necessarily whodunit, but rather howtodealwithit.
Jeff Turrentine - Washington Post


In this ambitious fourth novel from Whitbread winner Atkinson, private detective Jackson Brodie-ex-cop, ex-husband and weekend dad-takes on three cases involving past crimes that occurred in and around London. The first case introduces two middle-aged sisters who, after the death of their vile, distant father, look again into the disappearance of their beloved sister Olivia, last seen at three years old, while they were camping under the stars during an oppressive heat wave. A retired lawyer who lives only on the fumes of possible justice next enlists Jackson's aid in solving the brutal killing of his grown daughter 10 years earlier. In the third dog-eared case file, the sibling of an infamous ax-bludgeoner seeks a reunion with her niece, who as a baby was a witness to murder. Jackson's reluctant persistence heats up these cold cases and by happenstance leads him to reassess his own painful history. The humility of the extraordinary, unabashed characters is skillfully revealed with humor and surprise. Atkinson contrasts the inevitable results of family dysfunction with random fate, gracefully weaving the three stories into a denouement that taps into collective wishful thinking and suggests that warmth and safety may be found in the aftermath of blood and abandonment. Atkinson's meaty, satisfying prose will attract many eager readers. Atkinson crosses genres, attracting readers of literary fiction as well as thrillers.
Publishers Weekly


Edinburgh resident Atkinson has been touted for her clever subversion of the standard family saga (the Whitbread Prize-winning Behind the Scenes at the Museum), as well as her playful parody and magic realism (Not the End of the World). Now she turns her deft hand to the hard-boiled detective genre and wreaks a similarly wonderful havoc. Cambridge P.I. and Francophile Jackson Brodie serves as the link among three interwoven tales. Red herrings abound as Jackson plows through the sad cases of a missing toddler, a young woman brutally killed while temping at her father's law firm, and an overwrought mother driven to ax murder. The relatives of the victims, Jackson's motley clientele, prove to be alternatively pitiable and hilarious but always painfully human. Superfluous plot elements involving attempts on Brodie's life and the running commentary on Brodie's musical tastes may lead to comparisons with Ian Rankin's Inspector John Rebus series, but only briefly, for this is a very new world of old crimes. Recommended for larger fiction collections. —Jenn B. Stidham, Harris Cty. P.L., Houston
Library Journal


After two self-indulgent detours, Atkinson proves that her Whitbread Award-winning debut, Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1996), was no fluke with a novel about three interconnected mysteries. They seem totally unrelated at first to private detective Jackson Brodie, hired by separate individuals in Cambridge, England, to investigate long-dormant cases. Three-year-old Olivia Land disappeared from a tent in her family's backyard in 1970; 34 years later, her sisters Amelia and Julia discover Olivia's stuffed toy in their recently deceased father's study and want Jackson to find out what he had to do with the disappearance. Theo Wyre's beloved 18-year-old daughter Laura was murdered by a knife-wielding lunatic in 1994, and he too hires Jackson to crack this unsolved murder. Michelle was also 18 when she went to jail in 1979 for killing her husband with an ax while their infant daughter wailed in the playpen; she vanished after serving her time, but Shirley Morrison asks Jackson to find, not her sister Michelle, but the niece she promised to raise, then was forced to hand over to grandparents. The detective, whose bitter ex-wife uses Jackson's profound love for their eight-year-old daughter to torture him, finds all these stories of dead and/or missing girls extremely unsettling; we learn toward the end why the subject of young women in peril is particularly painful for him. Atkinson has always been a gripping storyteller, and her complicated narrative crackles with the earthy humor, vibrant characterizations, and shrewd social observations that enlivened her first novel but were largely swamped by postmodern game-playing in Human Croquet (1997) and Emotionally Weird (2000). Here, she craftsa compulsive page-turner that looks deep into the heart of sadness, cruelty, and loss, yet ultimately grants her charming p.i. (and most of the other appealingly offbeat characters, including one killer) a chance at happiness and some measure of reconciliation with the past. Wonderful fun and very moving: it's a pleasure to see this talented writer back on form.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. The three cases that open Case Histories are at first quite separate, and leave you wondering how Atkinson is going to pull it all together into one story. You might discuss whether she is successful at doing that—and how.

2. Case Histories has three unsolved crimes and has a private eye as hero. Kate Atkinson is known as a 'literary writer' and won the Whitbread Prize for her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. How is Case Histories different from a traditional detectvie novel—or is it?

3. Jackson believes "that his job was to help people be good rather than punish them for being bad." Another discussion point would be whether you think he is a moral character, and how you feel the revelation of the tragedy in his own past illuminates his actions in the novel.

4. To Jackson, it seems as if everyone he encounters has lost someone or something. One of Kate Atkinson's recurrent themes is that of lost children. In spite of her wicked sense of humour, she creates an overwhelming sense of tension in this novel. Is it that this theme speaks directly to the lost child deep inside every one of us?

5. "Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and the implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on." Is Kate Atkinson being mischievous here, or is this statement true of this novel?
(Questions issued by Transworld Publishers.)

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Shoot the Moon
Billie Letts, 2004
Grand Central Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446401142

Summary
A tale of a small Oklahoma town and the mystery that has haunted its residents for years.

In 1972, windswept DeClare, Oklahoma, was consumed by the murder of a young mother, Gaylene Harjo, and the disappearance of her baby, Nicky Jack. When the child's pajama bottoms were discovered on the banks of Willow Creek, everyone feared that he, too, had been killed, although his body was never found.

Nearly thirty years later, Nicky Jack mysteriously returns to DeClare, shocking the town and stirring up long-buried memories. But what he discovers about the night he vanished is more astonishing than he or anyone could have imagine. Piece by piece, what emerges is a story of dashed hopes, desperate love, and a secret that still cries out for justice...and redemption. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1937
• Where—Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
• Education—B.A., Southeast Missouri State University
• Awards—Percy Walker Award
• Currently—lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Billie Letts is the author of numerous highly acclaimed short stories and screenplay, and a former professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Her first novel, Where The Heart Is, won the Walker Percy Award, sold more than three million copies, and became a major motion picture. Her second novel, The Honk and Holler Opening Soon, was named the first "Oklahoma Reads Oklahoma" selection. Her third novel, Shoot the Moon and her fourth novel, Made in the U.S.A. were both New York Times bestsellers. Billie Letts is a native Oklahoman, and currently lives in Tulsa. (From the publisher.)

More
Betts was married to professor-turned-actor Dennis Letts, from 1958 until his death from cancer in 2008. Dennis served as Billie's editor for her novels. Together they had three sons: Dana Letts; playwright and actor, Tracy Letts; jazz musician and composer, Shawn Letts. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Letts has shown once again her gift for capturing the personalities that inhabit Oklahoma's small towns-and some of the bigger cities as well.
Tulsa World

Letts has a way of grabbing her audience with a gentle but very firm hand on the neck....She has an overwhelming sense of optimism that overshadows any minor evil lurking around the corner.
Dayton Daily News

A Beverly Hills veterinarian goes south hoping to locate the mother who gave him up for adoption-but finds himself instead investigating a murder, a cover-up, and attempts on his own life. Evoking the closeness of small-town life in DeClare, Oklahoma (epitomized by Teeve's Place, a combined diner and pool hall owned and run by Teeve Narjo), bestselling Letts (Where the Heart Is, 1995, etc.) begins her third outing as handsome Dr. Mark Allbright arrives in town. Mark has just learned that he is adopted and that his mother was Gaylene Narjo, from DeClare, and he now wants to confront her and ask why she didn't want him. But Gaylene, he learns, when he introduces himself to Teeve, was murdered 30 years ago and her son Nicky Jack, then ten-months-old, disappeared and was never seen again. The murder was attributed to a well-regarded African-American, Joe Dawson, who allegedly killed himself in jail. DeClare is a politically correct mix of good guys (Native Americans, a gay lawyer, a crusading anti-Republican journalist) and bad guys (a sadistic white sheriff, O Boy Daniels, a gun-nut, bigoted teachers) that may look good but makes for a blindingly unshaded story. As Mark reads Gaylene's diary, he learns how she dreamed of becoming an artist and how, as a native Cherokee, she was angered by the bigotry she experienced at high school. He also learns that she was pregnant when she graduated, and no one knows who was responsible. With the help of Ivey, Teeve's single and pregnant daughter, and of lawyer Hal Duchamp, Mark begins his search for Gaylene's killer. Some of the locals, though, including O Boy Daniels and the radio station's Arthur McFadden, aren't happy about Mark's continuing presence. Still, even when someone tries to take him out, Mark is not deterred. Eventually, of course, his amateur sleuthing pays off-and he even finds someone to love. Perfect for the beach.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. In her novels Billie Letts beautifully captures the personalities in Oklahoma's small towns. Do you think DeClare, Oklahoma could be "Any Town, USA" or is it uniquely a small town in the state of Oklahoma?

2. Key themes in this novel deal with the question of identity and self-knowledge. Mark Albright (Nicky Jack Harjo) doesn't know who he is. What does he learn about himself during the course of the story? Does he change in any fundamental way from the beginning to the end of the book?

3. Do you find the love relationship between Ivy and Mark/Nicky Jack believable? Why or why not?

4. We get to know Gaylene, posthumously, through what other people say about her and through her diaries. Are the two views of her similar or different? Why does she call herself "Spider Woman"?

5. What importance do you think race has in this novel: not much, some, or a great amount? What are some examples of racial discrimination faced by characters? Mark/Nicky Jack doesn't know he is part Cherokee. Is it important that he does know?

6. The book also raises some troubling issues faced by adopted children. What are they? Do you think an adopted child should be given his birth parents' identities? Why or why not?

7. Mark/Nicky Jack talks about having a careful plan for his life, and then fate dramatically changes that plan. He points out that Ivy has no plan at all, and she's drifting through life. What are the pros and cons of each character's approach to life? What is your own approach?

8. What do you make of the domino players? Why are they in the story? What do they contribute besides the title?

9. A frequent situation in the novels of Billie Letts is the dilemma faced by an unmarried pregnant woman about the child she carries. In this book, what choice does each of the unmarried pregnant women make with regard to her unborn child, and what are the consequences of that choice? Do you think each woman makes the best choice for her?

10. Because this is fiction, the author can create any ending she wishes for her characters. Do you agree with the fate she gives to each of the major characters? In particular, how do you feel about what happened to Carrie and her son Kippy? Are you convinced she would have taken his life along with her own?

11. Who would you say is the happiest or most "together" character or characters in this book? Why? Does "shooting the moon" make for happiness?

12. If there is someday a sequel about Mark/Nicky Jack and Ivy, what do you think might happen to them? Do you think their relationship will last?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter
J. Nozipo Maraire, 1996
Dell Publishing
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385318228


Summary 
In an extraordinary literary debut—written as a letter from a Zimbabwean mother to her daughter, a student at Harvard—J. Nozipo Maraire transforms the lessons of life into a lyrical narrative. Interweaving history and memories, disappointments and dreams, like the tales of the traditional village storyteller, this letter is a gift from one generation to the next. As her daughter enters a new world, a mother shares the riches of her own through stories of her personal experiences and those of her generation.

She writes of Zimbabwe's struggle for independence, and of the men and women who shaped it: Zenzele's father, an outspoken activist lawyer; her aunt, a schoolteacher by day and a secret guerrilla fighter by night; and her cousin, a maid and spy. Each parable is a shrewd and quite often humorous tale interwoven to form a compelling and powerful story. Every character is a revelation and each story a revolution. Zenzele is for anyone who has ever loved and lost, fought and won. It is a complex tale wherein lies a simple truth: Respect the individual but understand what is vital to the whole. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—1966
• Where—Zimbabwe
• Education—B.S., Harvard University, M.D. Columbia 
• Currently—lives New Haven, Connecticut, USA

Nozipo Maraire is a Zimbabwean doctor and writer. She is the author of Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter. She is a practicing neurosurgeon. She got her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and then attended The Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. Soon after she entered a neurosurgery internship at Yale. She currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
The vision is entirely that of the mother, which is, of course, the point of it all, but also a constriction. There is a didactic quality here, and the reader, standing in for Zenzele, feels a trifle cornered. The wisdoms and warnings sometimes sit uneasily alongside the more telling immediacy of the events that are the core of the book

That grumble out of the way, let it be said that there are plenty of rewards here too—a rich impression of the warmth and color of Zimbabwean family life, a view of the traumas of the struggle for independence through a series of sharp vignettes, and, above all, a sense of the mother's passionate conviction that "Africa needs the hearts and minds of its sons and daughters.... The address to Zenzele is not a plea for the retention of traditional values, though it is a sturdy defense of the importance of recognizing and cherishing your roots.
Penelope Lively - New York Times Book Review

Elegiac stress lends power to the story, resulting in a humane antiminimalism that may owe some of its richness to the work of authenticating in writing a largely unwritten experience. Although Maraire yields at times to rhetorical overflow, she mainly imbues the novel with the complexities of the mother's rural life as it undergoes political transformation in the world of the city. —Molly McQuade
Booklist

Maraire, a Harvard-educated native of Zimbabwe now living in the United States, has written a beautifully poignant first novel about what it means to be a woman in Africa. The novel is written in the form of a letter from a mother to her daughter, Zenzele, who is just beginning her studies at Harvard. The mother writes of her girlhood in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe's colonial name), the struggle for Zimbabwe's independence, and her hopes and fears for the next generation. She has watched villagers send the best of her generation to Europe or America for an education, with the hope that they would return with their newly learned skills to better the lives of their compatriots. Instead, she is saddened when they do not return home to live but come back only for visits, seeming to have lost all remnants of African culture. The mother offers her own stories in hopes that her daughter, while creating herself, will never forget whence she came. Highly recommended for women's studies collections and to general readers seeking an intimate view of another life.—Debbie Bogenschutz
Library Journal

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)

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Cataloochee 
Wayne Caldwell, 2007
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812973730


Summary
Against the breathtaking backdrop of Appalachia comes a rich, multilayered post-Civil War saga of three generations of families—their dreams, their downfalls, and their faith. Cataloochee is a slice of southern Americana told in the classic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner.

Nestled in the mountains of North Carolina sits Cataloochee. In a time when “where you was born was where God wanted you,” the Wrights and the Carters, both farming families, travel to the valley to escape the rapid growth of neighboring towns and to have a few hundred acres all to themselves. But progress eventually winds its way to Cataloochee, too, and year after year the population swells as more people come to the valley to stake their fortune.

Never one to pass on opportunity, Ezra Banks, an ambitious young man seeking some land of his own, arrives in Cataloochee in the 1880s. His first order of business is to marry a Carter girl, Hannah, the daughter of the valley’s largest landowner. From there Ezra’s brood grows, as do those of the Carters and the Wrights. With hard work and determination, the burgeouning community transforms wilderness into home, to be passed on through generations.

But the idyll is not to last, nor to be inherited: The government takes steps to relocate folks to make room for the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and tragedy will touch one of the clans in a single, unimaginable act. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1948
• Where—Asheville, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina; M.A.,
   Appalachian State; University; Ph.D., Duke University
• Currently—lives near Asheville, North Carolina


Wayne Caldwell was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Appalachian State University, and Duke University. He has taught at North Carolina Central University and at Union College in Schenectady, New York.  

Caldwell began writing fiction in the late 1990s. He has published four short stories and a poem, and won two short story prizes. Cataloochee, his first novel, brings to life a community’s historic struggles and close kinships over a span of six decades. Full of humor, darkness, beauty, and wisdom, Cataloochee is a classic novel of place and family

Caldwell lives near Asheville with his wife, Mary. They have two sons. (Adapted from the publisher and from the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Ramsey Library Special Collections.)

Book Reviews
In these days of strip malls and clogged highways, you can appreciate the government’s decision [to form the Great Smoky Mountains National Park]. But thanks to Caldwell’s skillful evocation, you’ll also be touched by the sense of loss that the people of this valley feel.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution


Caldwell fully captures the sense of the people, the time and the place as he writes of a vanished community and way of life.
The Denver Post


A vast, old-fashioned Southern tale...Caldwell writes with lyricism, precision, a hint of the Gothic, and a sweet underlying humor that together make his long story crackle and move. He captures the physical look and the rich language of this breathtaking mountainous country, and puts before us vivid new versions of an American type—hard, stoic, at home in isolation, courageous, pious, and strong—that is still an essential component of how we see ourselves. Every moment of the story feels both generous and true.
Oprah Magazine


The first time Ezra Banks sees the promised land called Cataloochee is when he runs away at age 14 and joins the Confederate army. So begins first-time novelist Caldwell's rambling account of life in the western mountains of North Carolina from 1864 to 1928. Land-poor Ezra returns to Cataloochee in 1880, marries Hannah Carter of the land-rich Carter family, takes over some of her father's property and goes on to raise a family and acquire more land, making him one of the wealthiest men in Cataloochee. But cantankerous Ezra is mean as a snake when he's drunk (and only slightly less when sober), earning him the community's enmity. The diffuse narrative moseys from one folksy yarn to the next about the fates of various members of the Carter/Banks clan. Late in the novel, conflict arrives in the form of the government's appropriation of Cataloochee to make way for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Then, Ezra, 78 and as irascible as ever, is shot to death, and his eldest son, Zeb, is charged with his murder. The ensuing trial is as singular as Cataloochee itself. A meandering and diverting collection of tangential yarns, Caldwell's debut will find a spot on many readers' shelves near Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Set in the reclusive mountains of North Carolina, Caldwell's rootsy first novel follows the small triumphs and tragedies of three families from the Civil War to 1928, when the area was absorbed into the new Smoky Mountains National Park. Keeping track of four generations of Carters, Banks, and Wrights, with their bountiful legions of offspring, would be a chore if not for Caldwell's deft touch, indelibly detailing characters even if their particular branch of the family tree only rustles free to offer a momentary glimpse into the loves, lives, and deaths of these hardscrabble folk. That the central conflict of the novel—a patricide—does not arise until well near the end speaks to the strength of the rest of this sprawling saga, wherein moments of inspired tenderness abut moments of unspeakable vileness, where friend and foe alike are worked deep into the folds of kith and kin. Throughout, Caldwell's prose weathers the bountiful yet perilous land with the measured resolve of an old folk balladeer, without resorting to sentiment or stereotype. Greil Marcus coined the term "old, weird America" in reference to the sometimes eerie, always peculiar Appalachian songs recorded by Harry Smith; this, then, is a novel about the folk who lived out their songs in that older, weirder America.—Ian Chipman
Booklist


Though Wayne Caldwell didn’t start writing until he turned 50, the debut novelist is now working on the sequel to his historical novel Cataloochee, which enters on fearsome patriarch Ezra Banks and portrays 60 years of a real-life community that once existed in rural North Carolina. The book features incredibly true-to-life, well-drawn characters, the “kind of people,” that “the reader misses when the last page is turned." "I hope people get a sense that we have lost this place and enjoy my re-creation,” says the author. “I became interested in Cataloochee the first time I went there. It was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen. I wrote a short story about my grandfather, which won a prize, and that started me forward.” To boost the book’s authenticity, the author revisited the setting with a Cataloochee native. “My cousin Raymond Caldwell was born there and had vivid memories of living there,” he says. “We would go hiking, and he could point out the cedar tree that used to be in someone’s front yard.” Caldwell also collected family stories and country lore to spin into his narrative. “I spent a lot of time with older folks like my wife’s great-uncle and those informed the book greatly,” he says. The sequel will follow the diaspora of Cataloochee’s denizens as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park comes into being in the 1930s.
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 you started.

1. Wayne Caldwell has said that he admires William Faulkner and Mark Twain, two authors whose works are "deadly serious" yet still contain a "bunch of belly laughs. Caldwell goes on to say, "I see no reason for a novel to be grim for 300 pages." What episodes strike you as particularly funny. What does the inclusion of humor add to Cataloochee?

2. One of the central concerns of the work is the loss of Eden: how civilization intrudes into an idyllic, close-knit, isolated community. In what way does Cataloochee call into question the idea of progress? Are we to feel sadness for the loss of a uniquely American way of life? This story took place in the two previous centuries. Is there a corollary "loss of eden" taking place in the 21st century?

3. Talk about how the different generations in Cataloochee viewed the government's relocation project and creation of a national park? Is the benefit we might feel today for the park worth the sense of loss felt by residents 80 years ago?

3. In the very first chapter, Ezra hears a Baptist preacher read from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 12, wherein God says to the rich man who wishs to store up his wealth,

Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall these things be, which thou has provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

How does this message echo throughout the book, especially, as regards Ezra?

4. The characters in this book often invite others to "pull up a chair and set awhile." Some readers have suggested that the invitation is for us, as well—that Caldwell has the ability to pull readers into the lives of all the characters. Do you feel that way, and if so, how does Caldwell, as a writer, accomplish that? If you don't feel invited in, why not?

5. The book begins, in the prologue, with the sound of six shots, heralding the death of Ezra. What else do those shots herald, metaphoriclly speaking? Also, of course, discuss Jeb's trial and outcome.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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