The Gift Counselor
Sheila M. Cronin, 2014
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780996046008
Summary
Jonquil Bloom is a single mom and UCLA graduate student doing research about gift-giving. Needing to support herself, she is hired at a local department store and becomes the gift counselor. She believes all gifts come with strings attached, but can she prove it?
Claude Chappel is the general contractor on the new construction job opposite the building where Jonquil lives. He is ready to settle down. Meeting Jonquil and befriending her son Billy make up his mind. He doesn’t know that Jonquil’s caution is due to a sudden upsurge of painful memories. Can he win her heart?
Billy Bloom has his heart set on getting a dog that Christmas. Not just any dog, but a black cocker spaniel puppy who lives down the street. His mother, the gift counselor, won’t allow it because she’s allergic to dogs. Or is she?
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., St. Mary's College; M.S., Hahnemann Medical Graduate School
• Currently—lives in Chicago
Sheila M. Cronin received a Master’s degree in mental health sciences from Hahnemann Medical Graduate School of Philadelphia. She practiced art therapy for ten years before relocating to Los Angeles to pursue creative writing. While on the west coast, she worked at Princess Cruises and had the privilege of being onboard escort to James A. Michener and his wife in Alaska.
Cronin's short romance, "Airport Love Story," appeared in the WritersNet Anthology of Prose: Fiction (Writers Club Press, 2002). In 2003, Sun-Maid Raisins hired her to compose "sayings" for the outside flaps of their lunch-size raisin boxes, which are published worldwide. She has also been published in Woman's World Magazine. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
The Gift Counselor is a lovely surprise, like a thoughtful gift from a dear friend.
Windy City Reviews
Wonderful, feel-good story.
Franciscanmom.com
The characters are ones you will come to care for and root for.
Beacher Weekly Newspaper
Discussion Questions
1. In what ways does a gift counselor differ from a personal shopper?
2. How does Rita influence Jonquil? How does Jonquil influence Rita?
3. Identify 3 events in the story that lead to Jonquil’s realization that true gifts are free. Did your ideas about gifts change as you read the story?
4. How is Claude able to get Jonquil to trust him?
5. Margo Bloom is the key figure in Jonquil’s childhood. Did you have a grandparent that influenced your life?
6. Billy Bloom has a generous nature. True or false. Give examples.
7. Mr. Merrill enjoys testing out new toys. The light moments offset the darker themes in the story. What lighter moments stand out for you?
8. What do you imagine happened to Jonquil’s father, John Bloom that caused him to disappear?
9. Would you want to talk to a gift counselor?
10. Which character did you care about most and why?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
The Girls
Emma Cline, 2016
Random House
356 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812998603
Summary
An indelible portrait of girls, the women they become, and that moment in life when everything can go horribly wrong—this stunning first novel is perfect for readers of Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad.
Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s.
At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader.
Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling, charged—a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life, and as her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence.
Emma Cline’s remarkable debut novel is gorgeously written and spellbinding, with razor-sharp precision and startling psychological insight. The Girls is a brilliant work of fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1988-1989
• Where—Sonoma, California, USA
• Education—B.A. Middlebury College; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Awards—Plimpton Award (Paris Review)
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Emma Cline is an American author, best known for The Girls, her 2016 debut novel loosely based on the Charles Manson murders of 1969. She has also written short stories for the Tin House and Paris Review.
Cline Grew up in California wine country: her father was a vintner, owner of Cline Cellers in Sonoma. Her mother came from the Jacuzzi family, inventors of the Jacuzzi whirlpool baths.
As a preteen, Cline had a brief stint as a film actress. She appeared in Flashcards, a 2003 short film, and When Billie Beat Bobby, a TV movie in which she played the young Billie Jean King.
At 13, she fell into a strange relationship with a much older man, a 54 year-old music promoter, who spotted her one day in Sonoma Plaza. They engaged in correspondence and occasional phone calls, talking about "teen stuff." It all ended when Cline got a boyfriend. Nonetheless, the episode seems an uncanny precursor to her later interest in—and sympathy for—the young women followers of Charles Manson.
Cline earned her B.A. from Middlebury College in Vermont, and two years later won a scholarship to the prestigious Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Several years later, she received her M.F.A from Columbia University. One of her stories submitted at Columbia, which also ran in the Paris Review (summer, 2013), contained a reference to Manson. In a second article for the Review, she wrote of her visit to the Manson Family cult site, where she felt a strong connection with the girls he'd lured away from their families.
Hired immediately after grad school as a fiction writer by The New Yorker, Cline was already at work on The Girls. Her manuscript would become a hotly sought after property, and its eventual acquisition by Random House earned her (so it is rumored) a cool $2 million. (Adapted from Vulture.com .)
Book Reviews
Ms. Cline also understands—at the start, at any rate—how to build layers of suspense by withholding information.... [But she] can’t come close to sustaining her novel’s early momentum.... The storytelling becomes vague and inchoate, as if you are reading a poem...about the novel you’d rather be consuming.... It’s not that Ms. Cline doesn’t possess obvious talent. She has an intuitive feel for...how young women move through the world, except when she tells instead of shows. Then her book simply collapses.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
The Girls is a seductive and arresting coming-of-age story, told in sentences at times so finely wrought they could almost be worn as jewelry…a spellbinding story. Cline gorgeously maps the topography of one loneliness-ravaged adolescent heart. She gives us the fictional truth of a girl chasing danger beyond her comprehension, in a summer of Longing and Loss.
Dylan Landis - New York Times Book Review
The Girls is an extraordinary act of restraint. With the maturity of a writer twice her age, Cline has written a wise novel that’s never showy: a quiet, seething confession of yearning and terror…. Debut novels like this are rare, indeed.
Washington Post
Finely intelligent, often superbly written, with flashingly brilliant sentences.At her frequent best, Cline sees the world exactly and generously. On every other page, it seems, there is something remarkable—an immaculate phrase, a boldly modifying adverb, a metaphor or simile that makes a sudden, electric connection between its poles….Much of this has to do with Cline’s ability to look again, like a painter, and see (or sense) things better than most of us do.
The New Yorker
(Starred review.) [P]rovocative, wonderfully written.... Cline is especially perceptive about... the difficult, sometimes destructive passages to adulthood.... The Girls is less about one night of violence than about the harm we can do, to ourselves and others, in our hunger for belonging and acceptance.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [I]impressive...a harrowing coming-of-age exploration of how far a young girl will go (and how much she will give up of herself) in her desperate quest to belong. Beautifully written and unforgettable. —Wilda Williams
Library Journal
Cline makes old news fresh, but [her] MFA's fondness for strenuously inventive language: ...."The words slit with scientific desire..." [is] more baffling than illuminating. And Evie's conclusion that patriarchal culture might turn any girl deadly feels...less [true] upon reflection.... Vivid and ambitious.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
A special thanks for Mary Lou Kolowitz of the Haverford Library in Havertown, PA, for these terrific questions.
1. Evie’s life is impacted by many circumstances from her childhood besides the communal group she met when she was14. Can you identify some of them based on her thoughts and actions in the book?
2. What Evie experiences after her separation from Connie is a life changing experience in itself for her. In one scene of the book, she describes drinking martinis and vomiting to try and rid herself of the loneliness she feels. Discuss any memories of adolescence you can remember and the vulnerability you may have felt.
3. Evie pities her mother. Even as a young girl, she has some understanding of the humiliation her mother endured from her father. How do you think this may have colored her perception of what love is?
4. Discuss Evie’s relationship to her father. Do you know any men who are similar in their parenting style (i.e., avoidance of parenting).
5. Why do you think Evie is so drawn to Suzanne?
6.) The book is an obvious reference to Charles Manson and his followers. Why do you think some people are attracted to a man like Russell to the point where they would do anything for him?
7. Do you think there is any hope for Evie after reading the book? How could she find happiness in her life?
8.) Did you enjoy the book? Why or why not?
(Questions from Mary Lou Kolowitz, Haverford Library.)
Each Vagabond by Name
Margo Orlando Littell, 2016
University of New Orleans Press
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781608011223
Summary
When a group of traveling people descends on the sleepy town of Shelk, Pennsylvania, Zaccariah Ramsy, owner of the local bar, finds himself drawn into their world after a hungry man turns up on his doorstep.
Meanwhile, Stella Vale, Ramsy's former love, believes that her long-lost daughter might be among those who begin to rob townspeople's homes.
As tensions between Shelk residents and the newcomers rise, Stella and Ramsy must decide whether they will remain isolated from the world around them--or reach for a life of new possibilities.
A piercing tale of isolation, redemption, and belonging, Each Vagabond by Name is a powerful exploration of loss by a commanding new literary voice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—Oct. 29, 1976
• Where—Connellsville, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Dayton; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—Maplewood, New Jersey
Margo Orlando Littell grew up in a small southwestern Pennsylvania town where crumbling mansions are all that remain of the coal-and-coke wealth from the early twentieth century, when the town led the United States in millionaires per capita. Now, nearly half the population lives at or below the poverty level, and haunting, once-splendid buildings in the old downtown can be purchased for a song.
After fifteen years of living in New York City, Barcelona, and Northern California, she now lives in northern New Jersey with her husband and two little girls. Still, southwestern Pennsylvania is the place that inspires almost all her fiction.
She is driven to write about characters who are rooted to a place and who, even if they succeed at leaving, feel pulled toward home for one reason or another. She finds inspiration in odd rummage-sale finds, visits to her hometown of Connellsville, PA, and newspaper articles that give a glimpse of quiet struggles and preoccupations that are just to the side of the expected thing.
The winner of the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize, Each Vagabond by Name is her first novel. (From the author.)
Visit the author's webpage.
Follow Margo on Facebook.
Discussion Questions
1. Stella has never given up hope of finding Lucy. But when she finally gets the blanket, her hope seems to evaporate. Do you think Stella will continue to hope to find Lucy? If so, do you think she bases this hope in realistic expectations?
2. Again and again, Ramsy remembers Hawk’s words: Worry’ll undo you. He claims that he’s always stayed out of people’s business, and his involvement with JT and the other thieves is new territory for him. How accurate is his own self-assessment? Is Ramsy more compassionate than he gives himself credit for?
3. When Ramsy grieves JT, he grieves both for JT and for "what he recognized of himself in him." What did Ramsy see of himself in JT? How are they alike and different?
4. The disappearances of Lucy and Liza bring Ramsy and Stella together, and Liza’s return is partially responsible for their breakup. What role do Liza and Lucy play in their eventual reconciliation? Discuss the impact of missing and found children on the evolution of Ramsy and Stella’s relationship.
5. How do the thieves change Ramsy’s life? How do they change Stella’s? And how do they change Smelk?
6. The thieves break into houses and use violence against the locals. Why does Ramsy feel compassion for them? Why doesn’t he join the local men in trying to make them leave?
7. Consider the definition and connotations of "vagabond." In what way are Ramsy and Stella vagabonds? Besides the thieves, could any other characters be considered vagabonds?
8. Ritual and tradition are a big part of life in Smelk. What traditions and rituals do the locals value most? To what extent is the anger against the thieves related to their disrupting these important rites?
9. Do you think Ramsy sees Smelk as his home? Why or why not? Does his idea of "home" change throughout the novel?
10. Ramsy doesn’t put much thought into domesticity, and the meals he cooks for himself are bland and simple. What does food represent to Ramsy? What role does food play in the novel?
11. Is Ramsy a moral character? What is his moral code? Consider the choices he makes regarding Emilian, JT, Jack Kurtz, and Marcie.
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Truly Madly Guilty
Liane Moriarty, 2016
Flatiron Books
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250069795
Summary
Liane Moriarty turns her unique, razor-sharp eye towards three seemingly happy families.
Sam and Clementine have a wonderful, albeit, busy life: they have two little girls, Sam has just started a new dream job, and Clementine, a cellist, is busy preparing for the audition of a lifetime. If there’s anything they can count on, it’s each other.
Clementine and Erika are each other’s oldest friends. A single look between them can convey an entire conversation. But theirs is a complicated relationship, so when Erika mentions a last minute invitation to a barbecue with her neighbors, Tiffany and Vid, Clementine and Sam don’t hesitate. Having Tiffany and Vid’s larger than life personalities there will be a welcome respite.
Two months later, it won’t stop raining, and Clementine and Sam can’t stop asking themselves the question: What if we hadn’t gone?
In Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty takes on the foundations of our lives: marriage, sex, parenthood, and friendship. She shows how guilt can expose the fault lines in the most seemingly strong relationships, how what we don’t say can be more powerful than what we do, and how sometimes it is the most innocent of moments that can do the greatest harm. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 1966
• Where—Sydney, Australia
• Education—M.A., Macquarie University
• Currently—lives in Sydney
Liane Moriarty is an Australian author and sister of author Jaclyn Moriarty. In its review of her 2013 novel, The Husband's Secret, she was referred to as "an edgier, more provocative and bolder successor to Maeve Binchy" by Kirkus Reviews.
Moriarty began work in advertising and marketing at a legal publishing company. She then ran her own company for a while before taking work as a freelance advertising copywriter. In 2004, after obtaining a Master's degree at Macquarie University in Sydney, her first novel Three Wishes, written as part of the degree, was published.
She is now the author of several other novels, including The Last Anniversary (2006) and What Alice Forgot (2010), The Hypnotist's Love Story (2011), The Husband's Secret (2013), and Big Little Lies (2014). She is also the author of the Nicola Berry series for children.
Moriarty lives in Sydney with her husband and two children. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/5/2013.)
Book Reviews
Sadly, there is too much trope and too much tease in Liane Moriarty's Truly, Madly, Guilty for it to stand up well in comparison to her previous novels—Big Little Lies or What Alice Forgot. In this latest, the women come off as cliches—the stripper with a heart of gold, the childless woman who desperately wants children, and the talented artist, haunted and insecure. READ MORE.
Cara Kless - LitLovers
Truly Madly Guilty…[is] about the day of a terrible, terrible barbecue, and features only a small group of characters. They are well delineated and saddled with various pathologies. (Ms. Moriarty is quite good with this kind of detail.) But hey, it’s just a barbecue. How earthshaking can the fallout be? The author does her damnedest to make it seem colossally important. She gives each character enough baggage for a world tour, even though this is just an afternoon in a showy suburban backyard in Sydney.… [I]t’s a shame to see her resort to the level of contrivance that this book requires.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Ms. Moriarty’s shining talent in Truly Madly Guilty is her uncanny ability to get into the mind of her well-developed characters, turn the mirror on the reader and make you think about your own relationships, both past and present. All those feelings of elation, adoration, complacency, regret and selfishness? I had them all while reading this book, and I truly couldn’t be more thankful for it.
Dominic DeAngelo - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The novel holds back the meat of the story until the reader is about to burst with curiosity, but this technique strangely doesn't feel like torture; it gives readers a chance to consider the endless possibilities of every moment.
Publishers Weekly
What's worse than a terrible riot at Pirriwee Public's annual school Trivia Night that leaves one parent dead? The sneaking suspicion that the death was actually murder.
Library Journal
[A] barbecue in Sydney gone terribly awry. What happened emerges slowly through glimpses of characters coping—or not coping.… Moriarty’s characters resolve their issues too neatly and with too much comforting ease. Not one of Moriarty's best outings.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the novel’s title. Why do all of the characters feel so guilty? Should they? How do they deal with their guilt?
2. The epigraph is a Claude Debussy quote: "Music is the silence between the notes." What does that mean to you? How significant are silences and the unsaid in this novel?
3. Erika’s psychologist tells her, "You’ve got to get this idea out of your head about there being some objective measure of normality.… This ‘normal’ person of whom you speak doesn’t exist!" Do you agree? Do you think this relates back to Tolstoy’s famous quote, "… each unhappy family is unhappy in itsown way"? Is the real normal that, once you scratch the surface, no family is normal?
4. What does Clementine mean when she thinks back on the "extraordinaryordinariness" of her life before the barbecue? How is the ordinary treated in this novel? Do you think it’s inevitable that we don’t appreciate the ordinary? Do we need a life event as jarring as what happened to Sam and Clementine in order to fully appreciate our lives?
5. Discuss Tiffany’s meditation on sex: "People had such complicated feelings when they heard that she’d been a dancer. It was all mixed up with their feelings about sex, which sadly for most people were always inextricably linked with shame and class and morality (some people thought she was confessing to an illegal act), and for the women there were issues relating to body image and jealousy and insecurity, and the men didn’t want to look too interested, even though they were generally very interested, and some men got that angry,defensive look as if she were trying to trick them into revealing a weakness, and most people, men and women, wanted to giggle like teenagers but didn’t know if they should. It was a freaking minefield." Did you feel yourself judging Tiffany because of her background? The second part of the quote touches on women’s body issues, a recurring theme in Moriarty’s novels. Why do you think she so often includes it in her stories? Do you think men have similar issues with their bodies? If so, do you think they are intricately tied to sex the way they are with women?
6. When Clementine asks Tiffany if she ever felt that the men who watched her dance were effectively cheating on their wives, she replies: "Their middle-aged wives were probably at home reading Fifty Shades of Grey…Or lusting over the lead in a chick flick." Do you think that’s a fair response? As a dancer, was Tiffany just another kind of fictional character? And going back to the notion of the ordinary losing its excitement, how do you think Vid and Tiffany’s relationship changed as it developed from an exotic dancer in a club and her customer to a long-married husband and wife with a child?
7. Were you surprised that Erika and Oliver have a healthier sex life than Clementine and Sam? Discuss Clementine’s bleak view of marriage: "sometimes she felt a sense of loss, of actual grief over the loss of their sex life, and other times she wondered if it was all in her head, if she was being typically melodramatic about something natural and inevitable. It happened to everyone, it was called getting ‘stale,’ it was called marriage." Do you agree? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the three marriages in this novel?
8. Discuss Clementine and Erika’s complicated friendship: "It was strange, because Clementine always felt that she hid herself from Erika, that she was more ‘herself’ with her ‘true’ friends, where the friendship flowed in an ordinary, uncomplicated, grown-up fashion (emails, phone calls, drinks, dinners, banter and jokes that everyone got), but right now it felt like none of those friends knew her the raw, ugly, childish, basic way that Erika did." Are the truest friendships the most difficult ones? Or would you say that Erika and Clementine are more like sisters, as Tiffany observes? What did you make of Oliver’s statement: "I’m your best friend, Erika…Don’t you know that?" Do you think best friends of the same gender can be closer than spouses? Why or why not?
9. What did you make of Erika’s request that Clementine donate her eggs? Were you surprised by Clementine’s response? Erika tells Oliver: "We did save Ruby’s life. That’s a fact. Why shouldn’t they repay us by doing something in return? And what does it matter what her motivations are?" Do you agree that in this case "the ends justify the means"?
10. In this novel, parenting is not always easy and wonderful: "No one warned you that having children reduced you right down to some smaller, rudimentary, primitive version of yourself, where your talents and your education and your achievements meant nothing." What do you think? How do the various mothers and fathers balance family and career?
11. Money and class are knotty issues in this novel. Vid’s relationship with wealth seems to be very straightforward: "He had the money. He could afford the best. So he’d buy the best and take pleasure in it." Tiffany’s, though, is more complicated. Why do you think that is? What role do you think gender plays in this difference, if at all?
12. Discuss this description of Sam and Clementine: "First-world medical care meant they didn’t have to pay for their first-world negligence." What is the relationship between status and guilt for the characters?
13. Dakota spends a good portion of the novel feeling guilty that Ruby fell into the fountain, and then at the end, we find out that Holly also feels guilt about her sister falling in. These two children shouldered tremendous guilt that no one realized, just as Erika felt guilt over her mother’s situation. The famous psychologist and psychoanalyst Erik Erikson believed that there are eight stages of development for children, one of which is guilt. As a child, did you feel guilty about something that you now realize was not your fault? How did this shape you as an adult?
14. Sylvia’s hoarding is a major source of embarrassment and sorrow for Erika. She reflects: "Her mother loved things so much that she had nothing." What do you make of that line?
15. Near the end of the novel, Clementine wonders "what sort of person Erika could have been, would have been, should have been, if she’d been given the privilege of an ordinary home. You could jump so much higher when you had somewhere safe to fall." Do you agree? How are the various characters helped and hindered by their respective childhoods?
16. Discuss Clementine’s revelation about Sam: "Her focus had always been on how his actions affected her feelings, as if his role was to do things for her, to her, and all that mattered was her emotional response to him, as if a ‘man’ were a product or a service, and she’d finally chosen the right brand to get the right response. Was it possible she’d never seen or truly loved him the way he deserved to be seen and loved? As a person? An ordinary, flawed, feeling person?" Does that resonate with you at all?
17. Sam and Clementine can’t understand why they are so affected by the barbecue: "They weren’t fighting over money or sex or housework. There were no knotty issues to untangle. Everything was the same as before the barbecue. It was just that nothing felt the same." What do they mean by that? How does life change for the three families after the barbecue? Do you think they are ultimately strengthened by what they went through?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Book Club Widowers
John Michael De Marco, 2016
CreateSpace Publishing
360 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781532789601
Summary
A weekend beach trip sounds perfect for a group of women who enjoy discussing literature and sipping wine in the back of a fledgling bookstore.
But as the departure date arrives, most have to back out due to family demands, work needs, and illnesses. Thirty-something mothers Emma, Jackie, and Kari still get to go, and are viewed as "the lucky ones."
Until they vanish.
The three drive off on Thursday, their luggage stocked with stylish outfits, swim wear, and sunscreen. When they don't return on Sunday or respond to calls and texts the affected husbands, ex-husband, and friends know it's out of character. They call the police, but no clues emerge for months.
This is the story of "The Book Club Widowers," their children, and friends, as well as the perplexed police detectives and several mysterious characters who loom in the shadows with potential answers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Cleveland, Ohio, USA
• Education—Florida State University, 1990; Asbury Theological Seminary
• Currently—lives in Franklin, Tennessee
John Michael De Marco is an American author of who lives in Nashville, Tennessee. His books focus on modern suburbanites—both their flaws and strengths—as they search for meaning, fulfillment, and passion in a constantly changing world.
His three novels include Book Club Widowers (2016), The Wine Steward's Lover (2012), and Narcissus Blinked (2011).
In addition to to his novels, De Marco has written two works of nonfiction, including The 4 Spheres of Intentional Living (2014) and a memoir, Chased by the Wind: A Youth's Literary Search for God (2013, rev. ed.). He has also written scripts, as well as thousands of articles for newspapers, magazines, websites, and blogs.
De Marco is a certified executive coach. Through his teaching, he offers insights and anecdotes "to help individuals reach more of their physical, intellectual, emotion, and spiritual potential." He is also an ordained minister. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Rich in character development, The Book Club Widowers takes readers on an intense, intellectual and emotional ride through the mysterious disappearance of three women in Florida.... This is an intellectual mystery, where the author engages readers with an intense, slow burn. There is not a wasted word. And those words captivate readers.... The Book Club Widowers is a "modern classic"...a winning touchdown!
Kelly Nutty - Amazon Customer Review
Discussion Questions
1. What would you do if your spouse vanished without a trace?
2. What would you tell your kids?
3. How would you go to work?
4. How would you embrace the future?
(Questions from the author's website.)