The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead

Characters
Plantation	Railroad	Others
Cora Ajarry – grandmother Mabel – mother, ran away Caesar – woodworker Lovey – Cora’s friend Chester – slave, no parents Jockey – oldest slave Hob – cabin of banishment James and Terrance Randall – Plantation Owners Connelly - overseer	Georgia: Mr. Fletcher – shopkeeper, sold Caesar’s bowls, told him about railroad Lumbly – agent South Carolina: Sam North Carolina: Martin Wells – station agent – station closed Ethel – wife Fiona – Irish house maid Jasmine – slave from Ethel’s childhood, raped by father Rescuers: Royal – born free Red	Mrs. Garner – Caesar’s first owner, taught him to read Arnold Ridgeway – slave catcher, could not match his father’s talent Anatomy House of the Proctor Medical School: Aloysius Stevens South Carolina: Mr. and Mrs. Anderson – employed Cora after escape Massie and Raymond – children Miss Lucy – proctor in dorm Miss Handler – teacher Museum of Natural Wonders – Cora “acted” in three exhibits North Carolina: Jamison – slave hunter Richard – new recruit “Friday Festival” Tennessee: Ridgeway Boseman Little Homer – free slave Jasper – captured slave Indiana: John (passed for white) and Gloria Valentine – farm owner Elijah Lander Mingo – informer about runways on farm

 For Discussion:

NOTE: Page numbers are from hardback edition.

1. Discuss Ridgeway.  How did his failure to meet his father’s talent as an ironworker influence his choice to become a slave catcher?
2. Discuss Ethel Wells.  As a youngster she played with Jasmine but at age 8 was no longer allowed to do so.  Her father raped Jasmine and fathered a child by her.  How do these experiences explain her behavior when her husband brought Cora home?  Do you think Ethel was gay?  Does that have any bearing on the story?
3. Discuss the motivation of the helpers in South Carolina: education, jobs, sterilization, syphilis experiment.  At one point, Cora thought, “But the ideals they help up for themselves, they denied others” (page 117).  What exactly was their motivation in helping?   Can you see both positive and negative motivations?   Was it possible for them to think differently given the historical period?
4. When Cora was in the museum displays in South Carolina, she picked out one viewer per hour and gave them the “evil eye” (page 125).  What did she hope to accomplish?  Were you surprised she looked at Massie this way? Do you think she should have felt differently toward Massie?
5. Were you surprised at Ridgeway’s positive assessment of Mabel and Cora?  He said, “People like you and your mother are the best of your race.... We can’t have you so fit you outrun us” (“Tennessee” chapter, page 223). 
6. Caesar blamed his first owner, Mrs. Garner, for his and his parents’ fate and not the niece who sold them with the estate because they had not been set free in a will.  Was this fair?
7. When the Valentine Farm was raided, people blamed Mingo as the informer.  Was he right to turn in the runaway slaves to protect the free blacks?
8. What was the author’s purpose in including the story of Stevens and the grave robbers?   Stevens thought, “…when his classmates put their blades to a colored cadaver, they did more for the cause of colored advancement than the most high-minded abolitionist.  In death the negro became a human being.  Only then was he the white man’s equal” (“Stevens” chapter, page 139).  How did this add to your understanding of the story?
9. Did you learn anything new about how slaves were treated in America?  Did you gain any new insights or understandings?

*****

First Semester Success, 2nd Edition, by Dr. Arden B. Hamer, is available as an eBook and hard copy at amazon.com and hard copy at www.wordassociation.com.  Click on the upper right link.

The Traitor's Wife, by Allison Pataki

Characters
Real	Fictional
Peggy Shippen Arnold Judge Edward Shippen, father Margaret – wife Betsy – older sister, married Edward Burd Benedict Arnold Major David Franks – aide-de-camp Edward Shippen Arnold – Peggy and Arnold’s son John Andre – British officer, became Chief of British Intelligence to recruit spies, 12/1879 John Stansbury – store owner, recruited Benedict Arnold and Peggy to become spies Joseph and Blanche Reed Meg Chow General George Washington General William Howe Alexander Hamilton Marquis de Lafayette	Clara Bell Caleb Little Oma – Clara’s grandmother, deceased Mrs. Quigley – housekeeper Mr. Quigley – butler Hannah Breunig – cook Brigitte Breunig - chambermaid

 For Discussion:

1. How difficult would it be in today’s world to live like Clara and not be able to speak your own mind? At the beginning of chapter two when Peggy asked her a question, she reflected, “Oma had always told her to tell the truth, but she wavered; were maids honest to their ladies, or did they choose the answer that was most polite?”
2. Would the outcome have been any different if Clara had chosen to give her own opinion at times instead of what Peggy wanted to hear?

3. Several people took things that were not their own.  Was this more common in war?  Should they have been more honest?  For example: Andre took goods from Benjamin Franklin’s house, Benedict Arnold took goods from the closed shops, and Peggy accepted items that were taken without permission from Arnold.
4. Were you able to connect with Clara even though her life was so different from what we know?  How was she any different from a slave?
5. Discuss the people/characters and their motivations and actions.  Who did you like or dislike and why?
6. Did you learn anything about our country’s history through this book?
7. How well did the author portray the real characters and the fictional ones?
8. Discuss your reading experience.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         *****  First Semester Success, 2nd Edition, by Dr. Arden B. Hamer, is available as an eBook and hard copy from amazon.com and hard copy from wordassociation.com.  Click on upper right link. 

The Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly

NOTE: Names in italics are real people.  Kasia and Zuzanna Kuzmerick are based on real sisters who were in the camp.

Characters
Caroline Ferriday American, former actress	Kasia Kuzmerick Polish teenager	Dr. Herta Oberheuser German doctor
Eliza Ferriday - mother Roger Fortier – Consul General Betty Merchant – friend Pia – secretary Paul Rodierre – actor, wife Rena Leena – daughter Ravensbruck Rabbits Committee 1957-58 Serge – Russian cook Janina Grabowski – brought to mother’s Paris apartment in 1947	Halina – mother Adalbert – father, ran postal center Zuzanna – sister, doctor Nadia Watroba – friend Pietrik Bakoski – friend, then husband; in AK (home army), hid Nadia and mother Luiza – sister Halina – Kasia and Pietrik’s daughter Janina Grabowski “Wiola” – resistance Lennart Fleischer – Halina sketched him before war to protect father Marthe – living with father at end of war	Mutti – Mother Anton – father, broke law by listening to foreign broadcasts and reading foreign papers Heinz – butcher, employed and raped Herta Pipi – friend at camp BDM – League of German Girls, female branch of Nazi youth Arrested, tried to commit suicide, sentenced to 20 years, served 5, able to practice medicine after released
	Ravensbruck Concentration Camp
	Ravensbruck Rabbits: Kasia Zuzanna Luiza Janina Halina – organized infirmary, drew portraits of Germans	Herta Fritz Fischer – medical school classmate, left camp and went to work at front (died in 2003, served 15 years in prison) Dr. Karl Gebhardt Elizabeth Marschall - nurse Vilmer Hartman Dorothea Binz – guard (all hung after trials)

 For Discussion:

1. What did you think about Halina drawing the Nazi’s portraits in order to help her family?  How would this seem to Kasia when she was in the resistance?
2. Did you understand Kasia’s guilt over her mother being arrested when she was bringing her a sandwich at her job?
3. Discuss Fritz Fischer and his decision to leave the concentration camp where he was safe and go to work at the front where he was in danger.    Contrast Fritz’s decision all the while predicting that Germany was losing the war with Herta who thought she was working for the greater good of Germany.
4. What do you think happened to Halina?  The only clue was when Commandant Suhren referred to “the incident…” (end of Chapter 20).
5. Why do you think Herta was awarded the War Merit Cross?  
6. What was the tradition of over-flowing a glass of champagne when Paul then dabbed the liquid behind Caroline’s and his ears (end of Chapter One).  What did this mean?
7. At the end of Chapter 37, Kasia reflected, “I’d survived Ravensbruck.  How could ordinary life be harder than that?”   Was is asking too much for her to be able to adjust given the guilt she felt about her mother as well as everything she had been through?  How do you think confronting Herta will help her?
8. Discuss the various characters and the following:
1. Caroline’s decision to help Paul and Rena find their baby.
2. Caroline’s consistent refusal of Paul after the war.
3. Did you feel any sympathy for Herta when she finally ran away from the camp and then tried to commit suicide?
4. Herta cutting herself to relieve stress (Chapter 20).
5. Herta was convicted and sent to prison, but was released early in 1952 and allowed to practice medicine.  Also, the two nurses were hung.  Why were Herta and Fritz not given the same punishment?
9. Discuss Wallis Simpson’s remark that, “the world has grown weary of all that death and destruction” (Chapter 38).
10. Discuss your reading experience.   Did you enjoy the story?  How did you deal with reading such upsetting events?

*****
First Semester Success, 2nd Edition, by Dr. Arden B. Hamer, is available as an ebook and hard copy from amazon.com and as a hard copy from wordassociation.com and barnesandnoble.com.  Click on the upper right link.

The Nightingale, by Kristen Hannah

Characters
Carriveau	Resistance
Vianne Mauriac Antoine – husband, prisoner of war Sophie – daughter Daniel Antoine Mauriac – Rachel’s son Ari Julien Mauriac – son conceived in rape, surgeon in America Julien and Madeline Rossignol – parents Rachel de Champlain – friend Sarah and Ari – children Captain Wolfgang Beck – Nazi lodger, killed Sturmbannfuhrer Von Richter – Nazi lodger Paul – policeman, collaborated with Germans, well-fed	Isabelle Rossignol – Vianne’s sister Juliette Gernaise – resistance identity, "The Nightingale" Julien Rossignol – father, poet, made forged documents Gaetan Dubois Monsieur Levy Anouk Henri Navarre Didier Madame Micheline Babineau Eduardo Edith Cavell – role model for Juliette

 For discussion:

1. Vianne and Isabelle were young when their mother died (approximately 14 and 4) and they were rejected by their father.   Could Vianne have been expected to act any differently toward Isabelle?
2. When Captain Beck asked Vianne to write the names of the Jewish citizens in the town (page 116), it seemed that he already knew the names.  Why did he ask her to do this?  Did Vianne have any choice?
3. Were you surprised at Rachel’s reaction when Vianne told her about including her name on the list?  Would you have been angry or understanding? 
4. Discuss the Carriveau citizens’ reactions to the German occupation.  Could they have reasonably fought back?
5. At one point, Captain Beck brought home a fish he had caught and asked Vianne to cook it for their dinner.  Was she right or wrong to accept the fish? (Beginning of chapter 15.)
6. In chapter 18, were you surprised that Isabelle’s father knew what she was doing?  Should or could he have done more to protect her?
7. In chapter 25, Isabelle hid airmen in Vianne’s barn.  Was she justified inputting Vianne and Sophie at risk?   Should Vianne have been more supportive?

8. Discuss the various characters and their relationships with each other:
1. Captain Beck – both human-being and enemy
2. Isabelle – willful rebel and resistance fighter
3. Vianne – eventually risked everything, including Sophie, to help Jewish orphans
4. Julien (father) – appeared to work for Germans but instead was working with resistance, sacrificed life for Isabelle
9. In the last lines of chapter 29 Vianne told the Mother Superior at the orphanage that she had to act because she could not “…let her [Sophie] believe it’s all right to do nothing in times such as these.”  Was she right to put Sophie at risk? 
10. In chapter 37, Vianne gave the Red Cross the names of the 19 children she had saved and asked to have them reunited with their families.  Then the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants) came to take Ari/Daniel to live with his relatives in Boston.   Do you think it was the best thing for the children to be uprooted again? 
11. Do you think Vianne should tell Julien his parentage and history?  Why did she not share her part in the war as well as Isabelle’s with him?
12. Discuss your reading experience.  Did you learn anything?  Did you enjoy the novel?

*****

First Semester Success, 2nd edition, by Dr. Arden B. Hamer, is now available in paper and as an ebook from amazon.com and in paper from wordassociation.com and barnesandnoble.com.   Click on the upper right link.

The Favorite Sister, by Jessica Knoll

PERSONAL REVIEW: I debated about including this discussion guide on my blog because I feel the book has little merit.   I think the book is written for young females in their 20s and early 30s, so I may have a distorted opinion.  (I am way over 30!!)  I have several complaints including an incomplete sentence on page 54 (“Introducing two people who are…”).  My biggest concern is the joking manner in which the doctor referred to HPV on page 146.  Given that the book may be read by impressionable young women, I thought this was irresponsible!

Characters
Goal Diggers of New York City	Others
Jen Greenberg – original member Pop-up juice stands Stephanie Simmons – original member Three fiction books and memoir African American Adopted Brett Courtney – original member Cycling studio and philanthropy SPOKE Lauren Bunn – brought in by Jen Dating apps – SADIE and SADIEq Hayley – former cast member Kelly Courtney – brought in by Brett Layla – Daughter, age 12	Yvette Greenberg – Jen’s mother Jesse Barnes – show manager Lisa – show runner Sheila Lott – Stephanie’s biological mother Vince – Stephanie’s husband Arch – Brett’s girlfriend, Indian

For Discussion

NOTE: The page numbers are from the hardback edition.

1. What did you think about Brett and Kelly’s constant physical fighting?   Why do you think they continued to do that as adults?
2. As you were reading, did you think Brett literally died or was removed from the show like Haley?
3. The book introduced the following issues.  Are there any others you identified?   Did the novel do a good job addressing these issues and presenting them in a thought-provoking way?

a.       Sexual identity

b.       Body image and definition of healthy (page 15)

c.       Motherhood identifying a female, superseding accomplishments (page 25)

d.       Decision to have children or not

e.       Race

f.        Racial profiling

g.       Sexual abuse

h.       Alcohol abuses (Lauren)

i.         Depression (Stephanie)

j.         Night Eating Syndrome (Brett, page 179)

4.       How do you think the references to the current time will affect the popularity of the book?

a.       Page 277 – Bill Cosby

b.       Page 291 – Gone Girl

c.       Page 201 – “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”

d.       Page 201 –  Lauren Conrad and Heidi

5.       On page 139, Kelly defines a strong woman as having “to do with taking responsibility for your actions, even when it feels like you didn’t have choice in the matter, because you always have a choice.”  According to this definition, who were the strong women in the novel?  Do you agree with this definition?

6.       On page 146, are the comments about HPV appropriate?  In the novel the doctor who was treating Stephanie make jokes “about how you weren’t cool unless you had HPV.   Women who have HPV are women who have lived.”    Given the intended audience for this book, how will this idea be understood?

7.       Discuss the various characters.  How well did you understand them?   Which ones were the most sympathetic?  The most realistic?

8.       Is there anything realistic in this book?  Does it matter if there is not?

*****
First Semester Success, 2nd Edition, by Arden B. Hamer, is now available in both hard copy and eBook on amazon.com and in hard copy from wordassociation.com and barnesandnoble.com.  Click on the upper right  link.

The Living, by Annie Dillard

NOTE: There is a character list at the beginning of the novel.   These are the same characters rearranged in a different format.  There is also a short vocabulary quiz with words from the novel  at the end.

Characters

Clare Fishburn Rooney - father Ada – mother, second husband Norval Tawes June Randall – wife, Minta Homer’s sister Mabel – daughter Glee Fishburn – Clare’s brother Grace – wife Vinnie and Nesta - daughters Minta Randalal Honer Eustace – husband, drowned clearing log jam Bert, Lulu and Hugh – children Bert and Lulu died in fire Hugh built in fireplace Howard, Green and Ardeth – Queen of May’s children raised by Minta Hugh Honer – attending medical school Vinnie Fishburn – future wife

John Ireland Sharp Family all drowned except John Pearl – wife Children – Cyrus, Vincent, Rush and Horace Johnny Lee – railroad worker, then employed by Sharps Lee Chin – brother, killed by Beal Beal Obenchain Axel and Martha – parents, took in John Sharp when family drowned Nan – sister, married Will Ruffin Senator Green Randall and Louisa – Minta and June’s parents in Baltimore

For Discussion:

NOTE: Page numbers are from 2013 Harper Perennial paperback edition.

1. Discuss the character of Beal Obenchain.  His father “distrusted his son Beal, and thought him a shirker” (page 63).   Consider the incident when Beal was small and he ran off with the deer’s intestine while father tried to kill the deer (page 63).  When he quit going to school his teacher reflected that “he was a coward who studied bullying” (page 64).  John Ireland Sharp later thought that when they were boys, “Beal had possibly often been afraid of him” (page 64).  How did he develop into the man he became?  Was there anything that could have been done to stop him before he murdered Lee Chin and threatened Clare Fishburn?
2. When Minta’s family was coming to visit, she “saw the scene with fresh eyes, and wondered if her mother, father and June could find aught to admire in her Indian friends – or in any of her friends” (page 119).  How do you think the Randall’s thought about Minta’s life?  What would they admire or appreciate?
3. Discuss how the Nooksack Indians and the Bostonians viewed their wives.  The Bostonians thought the Nooksack “use their women like mules” (page 121) while the Nooksack “pitied the Boston women” (page 122) because their husbands hit them.  
4. Throughout the novel were references about how men evaluate each other.  Discuss how people from the different backgrounds in the novel evaluated each other.  What criteria do we use today to evaluate someone’s worth?  
1. Towards the end of chapter 23 Clare Fishburn recognized that Senator Randall was “his own man – given here where his sort of man was less than nothing” (page 137).  Clare thought “that a man could be any sort at all, if he could carry it off” (page 137). 
2. Senator Randall in the end judged Clare a “a nobody” but Claire mistook his courteousness as respect.
3. On page 432, after the law was passed mandating education, Clare did not challenge Will Ruffin when he vowed to not send his children to school.  Will Ruffin felt that because Clare did not take the challenge, that “he was an inferior man, after all.” 
5. Discuss being ordinary.  When Ada thought about her sons, Clare and Glee, she thought “the times had gotten inside them in some ways as they aged, and made them both ordinary.  Which they were not meant to be: no one is” (page 202).  What did she mean by “ordinary?”   Is it a negative characteristic to be ordinary?
6. Discuss Clare and June’s reactions to Beal’s threat to kill Clare.  Clare almost seemed to accept the inevitable and thought “He needed to learn how to die” (page 231).  June on the other hand wanted to kill Beal first.
7. What was Beal’s motivation to threaten to kill a person who he selected randomly?
8. To what did you attribute Beal’s change in attitude about his life?  In chapter 70 he considered his life “vile” and thought “If he was not, as he did not now feel himself to be, the exceptional and superior man, then he was no man” (page 410).
9. Discuss Pearl Sharp.  She excelled “inside her house’s walls” and was not interested in discussing “things for men and boys,” and so “settled into the complacent ignorance of some women of her station, such as it was, who wondered why men disrespected them” (page 248).  On the other hand, she often stole and “picked up a few mote things for the harmless refreshment of it” (page 248).    At the end of the novel she got the big house she wanted, started an orphanage, seemed to accept John moving alone to an island, and still stole from the town’s store.   How would you explain her character?
10. In chapter 69, John Ireland Sharp moved to the isolated island.  He felt he could “at last permit himself to give up on himself entirely” (page 402).  How did you view his move? 
11. Two children I found particularly interesting were Cyrus and Mabel. 
1. Cyrus – he went to life by himself in the woods at a young age and always held his yo-yo.  He returned to a normal life style when he was in high school and was on the school basketball team.
2. Mabel was always described as “limp” although she did not seem to be described as having a disability.
12. Discuss your reading experience.   Did you enjoy the novel?  What did you like or not like about it?

Vocabulary Quiz (Match the bolded word with a definition below.  Note that two words were not found in a modern dictionary.):

Page 177 – “One of these roisterers apparently got ‘bedoozled,’ …”

Page 201 – “The Pioneers let Rooney join because…there were not enough old-timers left by the late seventies to make a good club – not that they had all died, but they had quit the settlement, absquatulated…”

Page 243 – “In fact, she (Vinnie) brought to the least occasions a fervidity and an ardor that stimulated people…”

Page 273 – On the journey east, Minta had told the children that by custom, children were mute and sessile on trains…”

Page 284 – “June had been unnerved and vexed all week, all month.  She had left home for Baltimore in a swivet.”

Page 352 – “Rush’s interesting brother Cyrus had caught a striped snake hours ago, and the children had passes it from arm to arm and stuck their fingertips in its mouth, seeking to give their mothers the pleefer, to astounding success.”

Definitions:

1. Permanently attached to a base
2. State of nervous excitement
3. Enthusiasm
4. Fled or absconded
5. Not in dictionary
6. Not in dictionary

*****

First Semester Success: 2nd Edition, by Dr. Arden B. Hamer, is now available as an  eBook.   The paper edition will be available soon.  Click on the upper right link.

An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones

Characters

Roy Olive - mother Big Roy – adopted Roy Walter “Ghetto Yoda” – biological father Celestial – artist Mr. Davenport – father, inventor Gloria – mother, 2nd wife, educator Uncle Banks – lawyer Aunt Sylvia – taught Celestial to make dolls when she stayed with her after affair with professor Andre – Celestial’s childhood friend Evie and Carlos – parents Raul Gomez – Celestial’s professor at Howard, affair Tamar – Celestial’s assistant Davina Hardrick Antoine Gillory “Hopper” or “Grasshopper” - son

For Discussion:

NOTE: Page numbers are from hardback edition.

1. When the business card fell out of Roy’s wallet (page 10) or the receipt for two pieces of lingerie (page 163), did you think he was innocent of having an affair?  Did Celestial over react?  Was it all right if Roy liked to flirt if he did not take it any further?
2. When Celestial was making the doll to sell to the mayor, why did she make it look like Roy?  Why did she then show it to Roy’s mother?
3. Who do you think was right when Roy and Celestial were arguing about Roy not telling that his father abandoned him and that he was adopted by Roy Jr.?
4. On page 34 when Celestial was remembering tutoring teen mothers, her supervisor implied that it was her duty to have children to counteract all of the teen mothers and their children.  Do you think this was her duty?
5. What did you think about the decision Roy and Celestial made to abort their baby because Roy was going to jail?   What would have happened if they had kept the baby?
6. When Celestial started to gain fame and won the award at the National Portrait Museum, she did not tell people that Roy was in jail because she thought it would take away from her art.  Do you agree?
7. The doll that won the award (see #6) was a likeness of Roy and Celestial dressed it in prison clothes.  She felt changing the clothing from baby clothes to prison clothes moved it from a toy to art.  Do you agree?  Why did she have to again use Roy’s image?
8. After several years Celestial told Roy that she no longer wanted to be married.  Could you understand her wishes?  Later then, when he said he did not want to see her, she accused him of being unkind because, “I can’t be exactly the way you want me to be” (page 88).  Who was being unkind?
9. Were you surprised to read that Andre loved Celestial?
10. After Roy was released and Andre came to Eloe to tell him about Andre and Celestial, Roy Sr. let Andre come knowing that Roy Jr. then would have time alone with Celestial.   Roy Sr. told Andre that he “didn’t listen to nothing but my heart” (page 222) when marrying Olive.  How is that different from what Andre was doing with Celestial?  Was Roy Sr. being fair to Andre and Celestial?
11. Why do you think Davina took in Roy the way she did right after he was released?  Were you surprised they ended up together at the end of the novel?
12. Celestial visited Olive when she was in hospice care and told her that Roy was in prison with his biological father (page 189).   Olive died two days later.   On page 189 Roy Sr. told Roy Jr. that after Celestial told her, “she gave up.”  On the other hand, on page 294, Celestial told Roy, “When she knew you weren’t by yourself, she could finally let go.”  Which explanation do you think is correct?
13. There were major themes addressed in the novel: being a strong woman; prejudice toward blacks, particularly in the court system; black culture vs. white; being falsely accused and jailed.  How important were each of these to the story?  Would the story be as effective, or more effective, if some things had been left out or switched around?
14. When Roy was talking to Andre about Walter (page 147), how did you feel about the use of the “n” word?
15. Was anyone clearly in the wrong in the story?  If so, who?  Was there anything the characters could have done better or differently?
16. Did you like the ending?   At the end, Roy shared with Celestial advice he got from Walter, “My prayer for you is peace, which is something you have to make. You can’t just have it” (page306).  How did each of the characters find peace?
17. If you liked the story, when did your interest get hooked?

*****
First Semester Success, 2nd edition, by Dr. Arden B. Hamer, is now available as an eBook.  The paper edition will be released soon.  Click on the upper right link.