Unsheltered
Barbara Kingsolver, 2018
HarperCollins
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062684561
Summary
A timely novel that interweaves past and present to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great upheaval.
Willa Knox has always prided herself on being the embodiment of responsibility for her family.
Which is why it’s so unnerving that she’s arrived at middle age with nothing to show for her hard work and dedication but a stack of unpaid bills and an inherited brick home in Vineland, New Jersey, that is literally falling apart.
The magazine where she worked has folded, and the college where her husband had tenure has closed. The dilapidated house is also home to her ailing and cantankerous Greek father-in-law and her two grown children: her stubborn, free-spirited daughter, Tig, and her dutiful debt-ridden, ivy educated son, Zeke, who has arrived with his unplanned baby in the wake of a life-shattering development.
In an act of desperation, Willa begins to investigate the history of her home, hoping that the local historical preservation society might take an interest and provide funding for its direly needed repairs.
Through her research into Vineland’s past and its creation as a Utopian community, she discovers a kindred spirit from the 1880s, Thatcher Greenwood.
A science teacher with a lifelong passion for honest investigation, Thatcher finds himself under siege in his community for telling the truth: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting new theory recently published by Charles Darwin. Thatcher’s friendships with a brilliant woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor draw him into a vendetta with the town’s most powerful men.
At home, his new wife and status-conscious mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his financial worries and the news that their elegant house is structurally unsound.
Brilliantly executed and compulsively readable, Unsheltered is the story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum, as they navigate the challenges of surviving a world in the throes of major cultural shifts.
In this mesmerizing story told in alternating chapters, Willa and Thatcher come to realize that though the future is uncertain, even unnerving, shelter can be found in the bonds of kindred—whether family or friends—and in the strength of the human spirit. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 8, 1955
• Where—Annapolis, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., DePauw University; M.S., University of Arizona
• Awards—Orange Prize
• Currently—lives on a farm in Virginia
Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955. She grew up "in the middle of an alfalfa field," in the part of eastern Kentucky that lies between the opulent horse farms and the impoverished coal fields. While her family has deep roots in the region, she never imagined staying there herself. "The options were limited—grow up to be a farmer or a farmer's wife."
Kingsolver has always been a storyteller: "I used to beg my mother to let me tell her a bedtime story." As a child, she wrote stories and essays and, beginning at the age of eight, kept a journal religiously. Still, it never occurred to Kingsolver that she could become a professional writer. Growing up in a rural place, where work centered mainly on survival, writing didn't seem to be a practical career choice. Besides, the writers she read, she once explained, "were mostly old, dead men. It was inconceivable that I might grow up to be one of those myself..."
Kingsolver left Kentucky to attend DePauw University in Indiana, where she majored in biology. She also took one creative writing course, and became active in the last anti-Vietnam War protests. After graduating in 1977, Kingsolver lived and worked in widely scattered places. In the early eighties, she pursued graduate studies in biology and ecology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she received a Masters of Science degree. She also enrolled in a writing class taught by author Francine Prose, whose work Kingsolver admires.
Kingsolver's fiction is rich with the language and imagery of her native Kentucky. But when she first left home, she says, "I lost my accent.... [P]eople made terrible fun of me for the way I used to talk, so I gave it up slowly and became something else." During her years in school and two years spent living in Greece and France she supported herself in a variety of jobs: as an archaeologist, copy editor, X-ray technician, house cleaner, biological researcher and translator of medical documents.
After graduate school, a position as a science writer for the University of Arizona soon led her into feature writing for journals and newspapers. Her numerous articles have appeared in a variety of publications, including The Nation, the New York Times, and Smithsonian, and many of them are included in the collection, High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never. In 1986 she won an Arizona Press Club award for outstanding feature writing, and in 1995, after the publication of High Tide in Tucson, Kingsolver was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from her alma mater, DePauw University.
Writing
Kingsolver credits her careers in scientific writing and journalism with instilling in her a writer's discipline and broadening her "fictional possibilities." Describing herself as a shy person who would generally prefer to stay at home with her computer, she explains that "journalism forces me to meet and talk with people I would never run across otherwise."
From 1985 through 1987, Kingsolver was a freelance journalist by day, but she was writing fiction by night. Married to a chemist in 1985, she suffered from insomnia after becoming pregnant the following year. Instead of following her doctor's recommendation to scrub the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush, Kingsolver sat in a closet and began to write The Bean Trees, a novel about a young woman who leaves rural Kentucky (accent intact) and finds herself living in urban Tucson.
The Bean Trees, originally published in 1988 and reissued in a special ten-year anniversary edition in 1998, was enthusiastically received by critics. But, perhaps more important to Kingsolver, the novel was read with delight and, even, passion by ordinary readers. "A novel can educate to some extent," she told Publishers Weekly. "But first, a novel has to entertain—that's the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I'll give you a reason to turn every page. I have a commitment to accessiblity. I believe in plot. I want an English professor to understand the symbolism while at the same time I want the people I grew up with—who may not often read anything but the Sears catalogue—to read my books."
For Kingsolver, writing is a form of political activism. When she was in her twenties she discovered Doris Lessing. "I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way. And it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do, if I could ever do that."
The Bean Trees was followed by the collection, Homeland and Other Stories (1989), the novels Animal Dreams (1990), and Pigs in Heaven (1993), and the bestselling High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now and Never (1995). Kingsolver has also published a collection of poetry, Another America: Otra America (Seal Press, 1992, 1998), and a nonfiction book, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of l983 (ILR Press/Cornell University Press, 1989, 1996). The Poisonwood Bible (1998) earned accolades at home and abroad, and was an Oprah's Book Club selection.
Barbara's Prodigal Summer (2000), is a novel set in a rural farming community in southern Appalachia. Small Wonder, April 2002, presents 23 wonderfully articulate essays. Here Barbara raises her voice in praise of nature, family, literature, and the joys of everyday life while examining the genesis of war, violence, and poverty in our world.
Two additional books became best sellers. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle came in 2007, again to great acclaim. Non-fiction, the book recounts a year in the life of Kingsolver's family as they grew all their own food. The Lacuna, published two years later, is a fictional account of historical events in Mexico during the 1930, and moving into the U.S. during the McCarthy era of the 1950's.
Extras
• Barbara Kingsolver lives in Southern Applachia with her husband Steven Hopp, and her two daughters, Camille from a previous marriage, and Lily, who was born in 1996. When not writing or spending time with her family, Barbara gardens, cooks, hikes, and works as an environmental activist and human-rights advocate.
• Given that Barbara Kingsolver's work covers the psychic and geographical territories that she knows firsthand, readers often assume that her work is autobiographical. "There are little things that people who know me might recognize in my novels," she acknowledges. "But my work is not about me."
• "If you want a slice of life, look out the window. An artist has to look out that window, isolate one or two suggestive things, and embroider them together with poetry and fabrication, to create a revelation. If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread." (Adapted from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Kingsolver has long written socially, politically and environmentally alert novels that engage with the wider world and its complications and vulnerabilities, all the while rendering the specific, smaller worlds of her characters humane and resonant.… The novel alternates between the 21st- and 19th-century stories, using the last words of one chapter as the title of the next one.… A dual narrative needs to be not only well choreographed, but also, more important, necessary. Kingsolver’s dual narrative works beautifully here.
Meg Wolitzer - New York Times Book Review
(Starred review) Kingsolver's meticulously observed, elegantly structured novel unites social commentary with gripping storytelling.… Containing both a rich story and a provocative depiction of times that shake the shelter of familiar beliefs, this novel shows Kingsolver at the top of her game.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Exceptionally involving and rewarding…There is much to delight in and think about while reveling in Kingsolver’s vital characters, quicksilver dialogue, intimate moments, dramatic showdowns, and lushly realized milieus.… An enveloping, tender, witty, and awakening novel of love and trauma, family and survival, moral dilemmas and intellectual challenges.
Booklist
(Starred review) Alternating between two centuries,… Kingsolver gives readers plenty to think about. Her warm humanism coupled with an unabashed point of view make her a fine 21st-century exponent of the honorable tradition of politically engaged fiction.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What do the living spaces in their various conditions throughout the novel suggest about the people living in them? Figuratively speaking, which foundations turn out to be solid, or precarious?
2. Mary Treat tells Thatcher that to be unsheltered is to live in daylight. What does she mean? What kinds of shelter do these characters crave, in their different centuries? How might sheltered lives—or the craving for them—become a hindrance?
3. Which of the many challenges confronting Willa are hers alone to bear, and why? What do you see as the foundation of her successful relationship with Iano? How has marriage changed, or not changed, since the time of Rose and Thatcher?
4. Why do you think happy marriages so rarely appear in fiction?
5. In what ways, if any, do you find Nick’s bigotry and anger comprehensible? What accounts for Tig’s patience with him, despite their differences? How do the family’s conflicts relate to the polarization of present times? What’s suggested by Willa’s and Nick’s argument taking place on the Walt Whitman Bridge?
6. How are Mary Treat’s eccentricities related to her strengths? In what ways is her friendship especially valuable to Thatcher? What is the role of the scientist in times of social upheaval?
7. What are some of the"old mythologies" discussed by Mary and Thatcher, to which people cling for comfort even when they’re no longer true? Are any of these still popular in the modern era?
8. Mary tells Thatcher she is "astonished at how little most people can manage to see." Specifically, which realities in her century, and ours, do people find it difficult to see? What are the costs? Is it possible to view ourselves objectively in our own time?
9. When Thatcher sees the world "divided in two camps, the investigators and the sweeteners," what is he observing? Which of the novel’s characters are the former, and which are the latter? Where would you place yourself?
10. Consider the creative names and botanical character identities throughout the novel. What do they reveal? How have the various characters’ education or backgrounds shaped their perspectives? Why do you think a select few of them are able to think outside of what Tig calls "the cardboard box," or Mary, "the pumpkin shell?"
11. What family dynamics might have made Tig and Zeke so different and combative, while Jorge and his siblings are close and supportive?
12. How do the characters in two centuries variously understand and connect with the natural world? When Willa’s phone causes "thousands of birds [to burst] from their tree skyward like a house going up in smoke," what does this potent image suggest? What about the ants that seem to inhabit the neighborhood outside the boundaries of time?
13. When Willa complains that "the rules don’t apply anymore," what does she mean? How are Zeke and Tig preparing differently for a future in which they will have less than their parents? Did the novel move you to any new insights about generational difference?
14. How does the powerful experience of loss affect this novel’s characters, at personal and societal levels? Is the nature of grief constant across human experience? How might "the loss of what they know" influence people’s political behavior?
15. The novel’s epigraph quotes a Wallace Stevens poem,"The Well Dressed Man with a Beard." How does the epigraph relate to the novel, and how might Christopher Hawk (a well-dressed man with a beard) serve as its pivot point? Why do you think the author chose to set the story in two different centuries? And why these two in particular?
16. In shifting between chapters, what changes did you notice in the characters’ language, or the narrative tone? In what ways did you find the two separate narratives connected?
17. What is the "precise balance of terror and mollycoddling" that Charles Landis manages? How, when, and why do you think people respond to this leadership style?
18. The shooting of Uri Carruth by Charles Landis, and subsequent not-guilty verdict, are actual historical events. Is the anecdote relevant to the present? What is the role of journalism in a healthy society? Who is responsible for its integrity?
19. As they shift from parent-child to a more adult relationship, what does Willa learn from her daughter? How might "the secret of happiness" be "low expectations?" How does this relate to the lost-and-found quote about happiness from Willa Cather’s My Àntonia?
20. Thatcher settles finally on seeing Mary Treat as "a giant redwood: oldest and youngest of all living things, the tree that stood past one eon into the next." Do you agree?
(Questions issued by HarperCollins.)
The Stationery Shop
Marjan Kamali, 2019
Gallery Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781982107499
Summary
A poignant, heartfelt novel of lost love explores loss, reconciliation, and the quirks of fate.
Roya, a dreamy, idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink.
Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—and she loses her heart at once.
Their romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.
A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts—a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows.
For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless.
With a sorrowful heart, she moves on—to college in California, to another man, to a life in New England—until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did you leave? Where did you go? How is it that you were able to forget me? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1970-71
• Where—Turkey
• Raised—Turkey, Kenya, Germany, Iran, and the U.S.
• Education—B.A., University of California-Berkeley; M.B.A., Columbia University; M.F.A., New York University
• Currently—lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts
Marjan Kamali was born in Turkey to Iranian parents. Her father was in the diplomatic corp, and Kamali spent her childhood in Kenya, Germany, Turkey, post-revolutionary Iran. In 1982, the family moved to Forest Hills, Queens, in New York City.
Kamali holds degrees from UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and New York University. To distract herself from spreadsheet drudgery while studying for her M.B.A. at Columbia, she began to write at fiction, eventually penning a short story that would become the opening chapter of her debut novel.
That debut, Together Tea, was published in 2013. It became a Massachusetts Book Award Finalist, an NPR WBUR Good Read, and a Target Emerging Author Selection. In 2019, Kamali issued her second novel, The Stationery Shop.
Kamail's other work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in two anthologies: Tremors and Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been. An excerpt from The Stationery Shop was published in Solstice Literary Magazine and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Marjan lives with her husband and two children in the Boston area. (Adapted from the publisher and Boston Athenaeum.)
Book Reviews
[M]oving.… The refined, melancholic mood of their story extends to Roya’s feelings about the Iran she left behind, which vanishes completely as the Shah’s authoritarian government gives way to an even more despotic clerical rule after the 1979 revolution.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
[A] wistful look at two idealists and the world they should have inherited.… Kamali offers a paean not just to lost love, but to the poetry, food, and culture that fed their memories for 60 years.
Christian Science Monitor
Grab your tissues.… Marjan Kamali’s second novel channels love in the time of coup d’états. Set among the political upheaval of 1950s Tehran, The Stationery Shop follows teenager Roya as she discovers the power of love, loss, and then, decades later, fate. And did we mention you’ll need tissues?
Boston Magazine
I! Am! Obsessed! With! This! Book!… Think The Notebook, only better (no offense, Ryan Gosling).
Cosmopolitan.com
A beautiful, emotionally honest story about first love, deep family bonds, and fate.
Pop Sugar
[A] tender story of lifelong love.… The loss of love and changing worlds is vividly captured by Kamali; time and circumstances kept these lovers apart, but nothing diminishes their connection. Readers will be swept away.
Publishers Weekly
The unfurling stories in Kamali’s sophomore novel will stun readers as the aromas of Persian cooking wafting throughout convince us that love can last a lifetime. For those who enjoy getting caught up in romance while discovering unfamiliar history of another country.
Library Journal
Kamali paints an evocative portrait of 1950s Iran and its political upheaval, and she cleverly writes the heartbreak of Roya and Bahman’s romance to mirror the tragic recent history of their country. Simultaneously briskly paced and deeply moving, this will appeal to fans of Khaled Hosseini and should find a wide audience.
Booklist
Sixty years after her first love failed to meet her in a market square, Roya Khanom Archer finally has the chance to see him. But will he break her heart again?… A sweeping romantic tale of thwarted love.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The first two chapters show us very different stages in Roya’s life. Discuss the similarities and differences between her life as a married woman in New England and her life as a teenager living in Tehran.
2. On page 3, Roya observes, "For hadn’t she married a man who was reasonable and, my goodness, unbelievably understanding? Hadn’t she, in the end, not married that boy, the one she met so many decades ago in a small stationery shop in Tehran, but lassoed her life instead to this Massachusetts-born pillar of stability?" How are Bahman and Walter different? How are they similar? What do you think Roya was looking for in each of them? How do her expectations for a relationship change throughout the story?
3. On page 56, after discovering Bahman’s mother believes he should marry Shahla, Roya tries to contain her anger: "This was the societal web of niceties and formalities and expected good female behavior that often suffocated her. But she had no choice but to bear it, to try to navigate within it. That much she knew." Discuss the importance of "saving face" for Iranian women in the 1950s. Do those expectations differ from what was expected of American women? What about women today? Research the cultural expectations of young women in Iran and discuss as a group. How are they similar or different to the expectations you or the women in your life have experienced?
4. Roya and Zari have very different personalities and ways of looking at life, and the two sisters often argue and clash. But there is a bond between them that is unbreakable. Have you experienced that simultaneous closeness and clashing with siblings in your life? What do you think it is about the sibling relationship in general and Roya and Zari’s sisterhood in particular that lends itself to such contradictions?"
5. Throughout the course of her courtship in 1953, Roya experiences passion and longing in new, surprising ways. For example, on page 84, when she watches Jahangir and Bahman dance, she is filled with desire. Compare Roya’s desire as a young woman to Badri’s. Do their social classes influence their actions? What would be the repercussions if Roya acted as Badri did in her youth?
6. Marjan Kamali employs foreshadowing as a plot device in The Stationery Shop. Discuss how it adds to the story and moves the narrative along. How would the novel read without foreshadowing?
7. In the 1950s, women in Tehran weren’t allowed the freedoms, though still limited, that women in America were. How does Roya’s family challenge those social expectations? How does that inform Roya’s life as grown woman?
8. In chapter 14, the readers learn about the history between Mr. Fakhri and Bahman’s mother. After reading this, why do you think Badri treated Roya so terribly?
9. On page 172, Roya struggles with cultural differences in flirting: "Sometimes there didn’t seem to be any rules. It had been far easier in Iran where tradition and tarof who your grandfather was often dictated how to behave." How do flirting and dating in both Tehran and America challenge Roya and her expectations for relationships? Discuss the differences in how Roya and Zari approach dating. Why do you think Zari feels more comfortable in America than Roya does? Do you think Roya would have had an easier time dating in America if she had never met Bahman?
10. In chapter 18, Bahman reveals the struggles of living with a mentally ill mother in Tehran. Discuss mental illness and its stigma as a group. How was mental illness viewed throughout time, and how does the treatment of the mentally ill vary across cultures? How is the way that Bahman and his father care for his mother countercultural?
11. At the beginning of chapter 19, Roya and Walter go on a double date with Zari and her boyfriend, Jack. Jack offends Roya with the way he speaks about Iran and its food and culture. Do you think Roya is right in feeling offended? Would you have been offended? Discuss cultural ignorance and bias as a group.
12. The characters in The Stationery Shop experience several devastating losses, from love to identity to miscarriage. How do they recover, and how do those losses forever change them? Can your group relate to these sorrows? What losses in your lives have forever changed you?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Vengeance of Mothers (One Thousand White Women Series, 2)
Jim Fergus, 2017
St. Martin's Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250093424
Summary
9 March 1876
My name is Meggie Kelly and I take up this pencil with my twin sister, Susie. We have nothing left, less than nothing. The village of our People has been destroyed, all our possessions burned, our friends butchered by the soldiers, our baby daughters gone, frozen to death on an ungodly trek across these rocky mountains.
Empty of human feeling, half-dead ourselves, all that remains of us intact are hearts turned to stone. We curse the U.S. government, we curse the Army, we curse the savagery of mankind, white and Indian alike. We curse God in his heaven. Do not underestimate the power of a mother’s vengeance…
So begins the Journal of Margaret Kelly, a woman who participated in the U.S. government's "Brides for Indians" program in 1873, a program whose conceit was that the way to peace between the United States and the Cheyenne Nation was for One Thousand White Woman to be given as brides in exchange for three hundred horses.
These "brides" were mostly fallen women; women in prison, prostitutes, the occasional adventurer, or those incarcerated in asylums. No one expected this program to work. And the brides themselves thought of it simply as a chance at freedom. But many of them fell in love with their Cheyenne spouses and had children with them … and became Cheyenne themselves.
The Vengeance of Mothers explores what happens to the bonds between wives and husbands, children and mothers, when society sees them as "unspeakable." What does it mean to be white, to be Cheyenne, and how far will these women go to avenge the ones they love?
With vivid detail and keen emotional depth, Jim Fergus brings to light a time and place in American history and fills it with unforgettable characters who live and breathe with a passion we can relate to even today. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1950
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—Colorado College
• Awards—Mountains & Plains Booksellers Assn. - Fiction of the Year Award
• Currently—divides his time between Arizona, Colorado, and France
Jim Fergus is an American born author, best know for his 1998 novel Ten Thousand White Woman. Fergus was born in Chicago; his mother was French mother and father American. He attended high school in Massachusetts and headed out West to study English at Colorado College.
After working as a tennis pro for 10 years, he moved to Rand, Colorado, in 1980, settling among its 13 residents and writing freelance full time. Over the years, he published 100s of articles, essays, and interviews for various national publications.
Books
A devoted traveler, Fergus published his first book, a travel/sporting memoir titled, A Hunter's Road, in 1992. The LA Times called it "an absorbing, provocative, and even enchanting book."
Fergus’s first novel, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd came out in 1998. The novel won the 1999 Fiction of the Year Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association and has since sold over a million copies in the U.S. and France.
In 1999, Fergus published The Sporting Road, a collection of outdoor articles and essays. That book was followed in 2005 with his second novel, The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles, historical fiction set in the 1930’s in Chicago, Arizona, and the Sierra Madre of Mexico.
Marie-Blanche, which he published in France in 2011, is historical fiction based on his own family — the complex and ultimately fatal relationship between Fergus’s French mother and grandmother.
In 2013, Fergus published another novel, first in France as Chrysis: Portrait de l’Amour, later the same year in the U.S. as The Memory of Love. Set in the 1920s, the novel is a love story based on the life of a true-life female painter, Chrysis Jungbluth.
Fergus published a follow-up in 2017 to his well known One Thousand White Women. The sequel, The Mothers of Vengeance, follows white women, married to Cheyennes under the "Brides for Indians" program, who seek vengeance after their husbands and children were killed during a raid by U.S. troops.
Jim Fergus divides his time between southern Arizona, northern Colorado, and France, (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Although historically accurate, the book’s reliance on the journal form leads to long monologues that read as wooden and redundant. However, the book starts quickly, bringing readers immediately into the time and place, and fans looking for adventure.
Publishers Weekly
Readers sensitive to racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes will find no enjoyment here, as the author ignores the more interesting stories of the Cheyenne and Lakota women who appear on the margins. However, fans of the TV show Hell on Wheels might find the novel of interest. —Emily Hamstra, Seattle
Library Journal
(Starred review.) It's is a gripping tale, a history lesson infused with both sadness at the violence perpetuated against the Cheyenne and awe at the endurance of this remarkable group of women.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. Like the story of May Dodd, this book is told through journal entries written by white women living among the Cheyenne and "discovered" by one of May's descendants. How did this structure affect your reading experience? Did the firsthand accounts make the women's experiences seem more relatable?Would you believe that these journals had been rediscovered and published?
2. What do you think about Gertie's allegiances? She has had some terrible experiences with the United States Army, and yet she continues to work for them, but the women still see her as trustworthy. Do you agree?
3. Were you surprised by the sudden return of Martha, and by the catatonic state she was in? What do you think helped her to begin recovering, and what do you predict her future might be like?
4. On page 62, Molly writes, "We are the innocents they once were, escaping dark pasts into uncertain futures, and in denying us that change, they would be turning their back on their own experience, denying themselves and their friends." Would the Kelly sisters be betraying their own experiences by sending the other women back? Did they make the correct choice not to?
5. Throughout the story, Christian Goodman frequently cites his religious upbringing and moral opposition to war as reasons why he will not fight, either for the US Army or the Cheyenne. Contrast his views with those of the Kelly sisters. Are any of them right or wrong? What about each of their lives leads them to hold these opinions?
6. Throughout the book, many of the women are determined to get vengeance for their murdered families and friends. Analyze the Kelly sisters’ reaction to actually getting that vengeance by killing young soldiers. Does this satisfy them, and do you think they will continue in their quest for revenge?
7. Compare and contrast the experiences of the first group of women with those of the "greenhorns.” Do you think that the second group of women sent to be brides had an advantage over the first because there were other white women to help them assimilate to Cheyenne culture? Why or why not?
8. Phemie names her band of women warriors the Strong-heart Society. What do you think is the significance of choosing that name?
9. Near the end of the book, Meggie says that women go through three stages of life: before they have children, motherhood, and after their child has died. What do you make of Molly’s suggestion that there might be a fourth stage, a new chance at life? Do you think she will achieve that fourth stage?
10. How do you interpret the closing scene of the novel?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Washington Black
Esi Edugyan, 2018
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525521426
Summary
Longlisted, 2018 Man Booker Prize
From the author of the award-winning international best seller Half-Blood Blues comes a dazzling new novel, about a boy who rises from the ashes of slavery to become a free man of the world.
George Washington Black, or "Wash," an eleven-year-old field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is terrified to be chosen by his master's brother as his manservant.
To his surprise, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist.
Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning—and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human.
But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, Christopher and Wash must abandon everything. What follows is their flight along the eastern coast of America, and, finally, to a remote outpost in the Arctic.
What brings Christopher and Wash together will tear them apart, propelling Wash even further across the globe in search of his true self.
From the blistering cane fields of the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, from the earliest aquariums of London to the eerie deserts of Morocco, Washington Black tells a story of self-invention and betrayal, of love and redemption, of a world destroyed and made whole again, and asks the question, What is true freedom? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1977 or 1978
• Where—Calgary, Alberta, Canada
• Education—University of Victoria; Johns Hopkins University
• Awards—Giller Prize; Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
• Currently—lives in Victoria, British Columbia
Esi Edugyan is a Canadian novelist, born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, to Ghanaian immigrant parents. She studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and Johns Hopkins University before publishing her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, in 2004.
Despite favourable reviews for her first novel, Edugyan had difficulty securing a publisher for her second fiction manuscript. She spent some time as a writer-in-residence in Stuttgart, Germany, which inspired her to write another novel, Half-Blood Blues, about a mixed-race jazz musician in World War II-era Europe who is abducted by the Nazis as a "Rhineland Bastard."
Published in 2011, Half-Blood Blues was shortlisted for that year's Man Booker Prize, Scotiabank Giller Prize, Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and Governor General's Award for English language fiction. She was one of two Canadian writers, alongside Patrick deWitt, to make all four award lists in 2011. On November 8, 2011 she won the Giller Prize. Again, alongside deWitt, Half-Blood Blues was also shortlisted for the 2012 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. In April 2012, Half-Blood Blues also won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
In 2018, Edugyan released Washington Black, which was long-listed for that year's Man Booker Prize.
Edugyan lives in Victoria, British Columbia, and is married to novelist and poet Steven Price. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Thrilling.… Washington Black is a gripping tale, made vivid by Esi Edugyan’s gifts for language and character, and by the strength of her story.… The reader feels honoured to have kept Wash company on his journeying: and moved to see him embark upon his true beginning.
Erica Wagner - New Statesman (UK)
Washington Black is deserving of its place [on the Man Booker Prize longlist]. It’s a box of treats that manages to work history, science, and politics together under the guise of a high-stakes, steampunk adventure.… For all its cinematic capers—there are snowstorms, identical twins, and searches for lost fathers—Washington Black is a profoundly humane story about false idols, the fickleness of fortune, and whether a slave, once freed, can ever truly be free.
Johanna Thomas-Corr - Times (UK)
Washington Black is as harrowing a portrayal of slavery as Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, but it also becomes a globe-trotting, page-turning adventure story. A historical epic with much to say about the present-day world.
Guardian (UK)
(Starred review) Edugyan’s magnificent third novel again demonstrates her range and gifts.… Edugyan mines the tensions between individual goodwill and systemic oppression.…. [In] supple, nuanced prose, Edugyan’s novel is both searing and beautiful.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [A] remarkable coming-of-age story.… [Edugyan] delivers a vibrant, poignant tale of a man's search for selfhood in a world where some see him as less than whole. —Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Library Journal
(Starred review) Wonderful.… Eloquent.… Brilliant.… Wash and Titch are so alive as to be unforgettable.… This important novel from the author of the superb Half-Blood Blues belongs in every library
Booklist
(Starred review) One of the most unconventional escapes from slavery ever chronicled.… Edugyan displays… ingenuity and resourcefulness …and the reader’s expectations are upended almost as often as her hero’s. A thoughtful, boldly imagined ripsnorter.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Big Kit tells Washington that "If you dead, you wake up again in your homeland. You wake up free." How does this line resonate at the end of the book, in the final moments as Wash asks about Dahomey and looks out into the horizon?
2. Why do you think Big Kit didn’t tell Wash that she was his mother? Do you think he would have responded to Titch’s offer differently had he known? How might his life have been different?
3. Another secret kept in the novel is when Philip delays giving Titch the news of his father’s death—which turns out not to be true. How does this lie compare to Big Kit’s? How is Titch’s response different from Wash’s?
4. Wash describes his scar from the explosion with the Cloud Cutter as "the utter destruction [that] his act had now wrought upon my life." Discuss the kinds of scars the characters sustain in the novel, both visible and invisible.
5. Tanna tells Wash, "You are like an interruption in a novel, Wash. The agent that sets things off course. Like a hailstorm. Or a wedding." How does this metaphor manifest in literal and symbolic ways throughout Wash’s journeys?
6. Wash’s final meeting with Titch calls into question Titch’s motives for educating him. Wash accuses Titch of not really treating him as more than a slave. What is Wash’s benchmark for love and trust? Do Big Kit and Tanna fill the holes in his life that send him on an "erratic pursuit of an unanswerable truth [and] calm my sense of rootlessness—solve the chaos of my origins"?
7. Describe Wash and Tanna’s relationship. What qualities and life experiences do they share that draw them together? What differences create a gulf between them?
8. How is Wash sometimes manipulated by those around him? Who would you say is the worst offender? As one example, consider the bounty Erasmus puts on his head. Do you believe Titch’s remark that it was more a way to get back at Titch than a desire to find Wash?
9. What does it mean to be a "master" in this time period and for these characters? Recall Wash’s first impression of Philip as "the oddity of a body used for nothing but satisfying urges, bloated and ethereal as sea foam, as if it might break apart. He smelled of molasses and salted cod, and of the fine sweetness of mangoes in the hot season."
10. Part of what Titch first notices in Wash is an uncanny gift for drawing. How does the ability to observe and record run through the novel as a motif? What becomes, as Titch says, "worthy of observation"?
11. What draws Wash to the beauty of the octopus? What does it mean for him, a former slave, to capture it and other specimens for study and display, even with the motive of showing people that creatures they thought were "nightmarish …were in fact beautiful and nothing to fear"?
12. Titch’s confession about how he treated Philip as a boy reveals a new side of him to Wash. Does this revelation lead you to feel more or less compassion toward him? Does it complicate his relationship with Wash?
13. The novel is set between 1830 and 1836 and takes place on multiple continents. How are the larger global and political tremors shaking the world during this time felt through the characters? For example, Titch is described as an Abolitionist and often derided for it. How does this aspect of his worldview affect the way he behaves? What about your perceptions of him as a character?
14. Today in 2018, there are many groups suffering under the oppression of cruel governments and leaders. How might a narrative of their experiences compare to Wash’s? How are today’s oppressed being given or denied a voice?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
You Are Not Alone
Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen, 2019
St. Martin's Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250202031
Summary
Shay Miller has three strikes against her: no job, no apartment, no love in her life.
But when she witnesses a perfectly normal looking young woman about her age make the chilling decision to leap in front of an ongoing subway train, Shay realizes she could end up in the same spiral.
She is intrigued by a group of women who seem to have it all together, and they invite her with the promise: "You are not alone."
Why not align herself with the glamorous and seductive Moore sisters, Cassandra and Jane? They seem to have beaten back their demons, and made a life on their own terms—a life most people can only ever envy. They are everything Shay aspires to be, and they seem to have the keys to getting exactly what they want.
As Shay is pulled deeper and deeper under the spell of the Moore sisters, she finds her life getting better and better. But what price does she have to pay? What do Cassandra and Jane want from her? And what secrets do they, and Shay, have that will come to a deadly confrontation?
You are not alone: Is it a promise? Or a threat? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Greer Hendricks
• Birth—ca. 1968
• Raised—San Francisco, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Connecticut College; M.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Greer Hendricks spent over two decades as an editor at Simon & Schuster. Prior to her tenure in publishing, she worked at Allure magazine and obtained her Master's in journalism from Columbia University.
Greer's writing has been published in The New York Times and Publishers Weekly. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children. The Wife Between Us is her first novel (From the publisher.)
According to Publishers Weekly, Hendricks worked with Sarah Pekkanen on Pekkanen's 2010 debut novel, The Opposite of Me. The two formed a close friendship and went on to publishd six more of Pekkanen's novels.
When Greer left publishing in 2014, Pekkanen was one of the few who knew of Hendrick's desire to write. Co-authoring a book with Hendricks, Pekkanen believed, would up her own game. So began their collaboration on The Wife Between Us (2018), followed by An Anonymous Girl (2019)
Sarah Pekkanen
• Birth—1967
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Raised—Bethesda, Maryland
• Education—University of Wisconsin; University of Maryland
• Currently—lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland
Sarah Pekkanen was born in New York City, arriving so quickly that doctors had no time to give her mother painkillers. This was the last time Sarah ever arrived for anything earlier than expected. Her mother still harbors a slight grudge.
Sarah’s family moved to Bethesda, Maryland, where Sarah, along with a co-author, wrote a book entitled "Miscellaneous Tales and Poems." Shockingly, publishers did not leap upon this literary masterpiece. Sarah sent a sternly-worded letter to publishers asking them to respond to her manuscript. Sarah no longer favors Raggedy Ann stationery, although she is sure it impressed top New York publishers.
Sarah’s parents were hauled into her elementary school to see first-hand the shocking condition of her desk. Sarah’s parents stared, open-mouthed, at the crumpled pieces of paper, broken pencils, and old notebooks crowding Sarah’s desk. Sarah’s organization skills have since improved. Slightly.
After college, Sarah began work as a journalist, covering Capitol Hill. Unfortunately, Sarah could not understand the thick drawls of the U.S. Senators from Alabama, resulting in many unintentional misquotes. Sarah was groped by one octogenarian politician, sumo-bumped off a subway car by Ted Kennedy, and unsuccessfully sued by the chief of staff to a corrupt U.S. Congresswoman. Sarah also worked briefly as an on-air correspondent for e! Entertainment Network, until the e! producers realized that Capitol Hill wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, what one might call sexy.
Sarah married Glenn Reynolds, completing her rebellion against her father, who told her never to become a writer or marry a lawyer.
Sarah took a job at Gannett New Service/USAToday, covering Capitol Hill. Sarah was assigned to cover the White House Correspondents Dinner and rode in the Presidential motorcade to the dinner. Sarah convinced a White House aide to let her stick her head out of the limousine moon-roof during the ride and wave to onlookers. Later, her triumph was tempered by the fact that bouncers would not allow her into the Vanity Fair after-party. Sarah attempted entry three times in case the bouncers were just kidding.
Sarah took a job writing features for the Baltimore Sun, and interviewed the actor who played Greg Brady. She refrained from asking if he really made out with Marcia, but just barely.
Sarah and Glenn’s son Jackson was born. He arrived too quickly for Sarah to receive painkillers, and Sarah was pretty sure she saw her mother smirking. When Glenn put a loving hand on Sarah’s shoulder during the throes of labor, Sarah decided the most expedient way to get Glenn to remove his hand was to bite it, hard. She was proved right.
Twenty months later, Sarah and Glenn’s son Will was born. Three weeks later, Sarah and Glenn moved into a new home and renovated the kitchen. Two weeks later, Glenn caught pneumonia and simultaneously started a new job. Ten days after the kitchen renovation was complete, the kitchen caught on fire, and Sarah, Glenn and family moved to a hotel while renovation began anew. Sarah and Glenn decided to work on their "timing" issues.
Having left her journalism job to chase around the ever-active Jack and Will, Sarah started writing a column for Bethesda Magazine and began work on a novel. She did not write it on Raggedy Ann stationery.
Her first book, The Opposite of Me, came out in 2010 and her second, Skiping, a Beat in 2011. Those were followed by These Girls in 2012, The Best of Me in 2013, and Catching Air in 2014.
Sarah gave birth to a bouncing baby boy, Dylan, and gets a little weepy every time she contemplates her good luck. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Psychological suspense is a genre that needs to be handled with kid gloves.… Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen seem to have mastered the formula.… [A] creepy-crawly tale.
New York Times Book Review
[E]ntertaining yet shallow psychological thriller…. Though the story doesn’t delve deep into the characters, the strong plot generates plenty of tension…. Though not up to the standard of the authors’ previous books, this one’s sure to please suspense fans.
Publishers Weekly
Dynamic duo Hendricks and Pekkanen bat another one out of the park with this unputdownable, highly recommended thrill ride. —Cynthia Price, Francis Marion Univ. Lib., Florence, SC
Library Journal
Masterfully escalates the suspense...keep[s] the reader guessing until the end. A great follow-up.
Booklist
Witnessing a suicide proves almost fatal for the witness herself.… The authors dole out clues… [through] flashbacks; finally we get the detail that makes the pieces come together…. Lots of frenzied flipping back and forth for readers who like to figure out the puzzle.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How does data shape Shay’s world and how does she process it? Does her data journal ultimately serve a higher purpose? Did you find Shay’s data entries helped set up key moments in the story? Which data nuggets did you find particularly interesting or surprising?
2. Discuss how the Moore sisters came to infiltrate the lives of Stacey, Daphne, Beth, and Amanda. How did their paths overlap and what does each woman bring to the table in terms of their talents? What are they asked to sacrifice for the favors they’ve been given?
3. Were you impressed by the Moore sisters’ level of surveillance and intervention in others’ lives? How is this influence wielded in both sinister and life affirming ways? What ties these seemingly dissimilar women together?
4. Do you think Shay could have avoided being absorbed into the sisters’ orbit? What was appealing to Shay about these glamorous women? Is loneliness Shay’s greatest weakness?
5. What psychological tricks and methods (like offering gifts) do the Moore sisters use to brilliantly manipulate their targets?
6. When did you suspect Amanda was in danger? What about Shay? What early signs tipped you off?
7. How did your feeling about Detective Williams evolve throughout the book? When did you realize that she was operating behind the scenes to help Shay?
8. Describe how you felt watching Shay transform into a clone of Amanda and paradoxically grow into a more independent and confident version of herself. Were you torn about how Shay was evolving? When did the cost grow too high?
9. What is it about New York City—a modern, bustling, and compressed city—that serves as an ideal backdrop or accomplice to this story?
10. Discuss the early lives of the Moore sisters—what did you learn later in the novel that helped color your reading of their actions or behaviors? Did you root for them at any point in the story? Who was really the master architect of their plans, and how did the sisters manage to look out for each other?
11. Discuss Sean and Jody’s role in Shay’s life. How did their triangle affect Shay’s susceptibility to the Moore sisters’ overtures? What do the people in Shay’s life get wrong about her or misread?
12. When Shay visits Amanda’s mother, she feels as if she’s tumbled into something called the Snowball Effect: “Basically it means that people who commit small acts of dishonesty find it easier to tell more lies. As your fabrications pile up, your anxiety and shame start to disappear” (p. 116). Why does Shay think this? And does the Snowball Effect apply to the other women in this novel besides Shay?
13. “Everything is working beautifully. Even though Cassandra and Jane don’t enjoy deceiving the other women, it’s necessary to protect them” (p. 195). Do the other women in the group consent to setting up Shay for the crime? Why? How do they engage with the sisters’ plans, even if seemingly coerced by their debt to them?
14. What cracks do the sisters begin to show that giveaway their scheme? The clues inadvertently dropped about a smoothie recipe, bedroom doors being left ajar, meeting the neighbor with a cat--do these tip off Shay initially? How does she continue to justify their kindnesses against the mounting evidence of something sinister at work?
15. Who is James and why does he become the target for the circle? What heinous acts has he committed?Does he deserve the punishment he gets?
16. What separates justice from revenge? Can you justify the intentions of the Moore sisters? Is their mission sympathetic? Is their approach more swift and satisfying than the legal system, as they assert?
17. Could you imagine yourself falling under the spell of the Moore sisters? What would appeal to you, or what characteristics of your personality would make you the most vulnerable to their influence?
18. Did you enjoy the cat-and-mouse chase and subway clash at the end of the novel? Were you satisfied and surprised by how all the puzzle pieces came together?
19. Did you consider Shay’s last actions suspect—is there any question she committed a murder? What do you think she feels in her heart?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)