A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley

Characters
Cook family: Larry – dad Mother – deceased, cancer Ginny – miscarriages, husband Tyler Rose – breast cancer, husband Pete (musician), daughters Pammy and Linda Caroline – lawyer, husband Frank Clark family: Harold – father Mother – deceased, cancer Loren – stayed on farm Jess – in military, lived in Canada for 13 years	Marv Carson – banker Ken LaSalle – lawyer Henry Dodge – minister Jean Cartier – Lawyer in Macon City Eileen – Ginny’s manager at Perkins

For Discussion:

NOTE: Page numbers are from the paperback edition.

1. Discuss the various relationships in the novel:
1. Jess and mother – she did not try to contact him and tell him she was dying
2. Caroline and Larry and also with Ginny and Rose
3.  Ginny and Rose
4.   Jess and Ginny and then Rose 
5.   Ginny and mother – One of her mother’s friends confided in Ginny that her mother was “…afraid for you.  For the life you would live after she died.”  She also told her, “For one thing, she wanted you to have more choices.  I know she wanted you to go to college” (page 91).
6. Jess and the Cook family
7.  Rose and Pete and Ginny and Ty
8.  Larry with everyone!

2. Do you think the author’s analysis is correct about the thinking of city people “looking for the payoff in a situation rather than the pitfall” compared to farmers “looking for pitfalls, holes, drop-offs…” (page 77)?
3. There was a lot of emphasis on patience, endurance and not speaking your mind, especially with Ginny, Rose, Ty and Pete.  At a point Ginny thought, “Maybe if we had conducted out lives differently in the past, had not been so accommodating, not so malleable…” (page 147).  Was it possible for them to have been anything different?
4. What did you think of Caroline’s change of attitude about giving the farm to Ginny and Rose?  On page 21, Ginny thought Caroline, “would have seen my father’s plan as a trapdoor plunging her into a chute that would deposit her right back on the farm.”  Did Larry misunderstand her when she said “I don’t know” (page 19)?  Why did she bring the lawsuit again Ginny and Rose with Larry at the end of the novel?
5. Discuss Harold’s public appearance compared to his actual person.  For example, he kept his truck dirty so that it seemed like he was close to disaster but the engine was spotless and showed that he was doing very well.
6. Why did Harold set things up at the church supper the way he did with Jess and the Cook family seated in the middle of the room?  Afterwards Rose said to Jess, “He intended to humiliate both you and us, and to do it in public” (page 236).  Was he planning all along to embarrass them?
7. What did you think about Harold’s accident that led to his blindness?  Why did Pete empty the water tank on the fertilizer tank (page 301)?  Why Harold “jiggled the hose” (page 231)?   
8. Was Harold a friend or just a trouble-maker? 
9. Regarding Larry, Rose said to Ginny, “As long as he acts crazy, then he gets off scot-free” (page 235).  How much of his behavior was calculating and how much was real?
10. Why did Pete commit suicide?
11. What did you think when you read that Ginny was going to poison Rose?
12. Ginny did not tell Caroline of the sexual abuse by her father.  Do you think she should have confided in her?  Do you think Caroline was abused?
13. On page 323 Ginny thought about “Rose’s real third child…the one who would not be parted from her.  Her dark child, the child of her union with Daddy.”  Who was this child?
14. How would different people read this book?  For example, a younger person and a senior citizen or a farmer and someone who works in the city.
15. Were there any positive moments in the book?
16. How do you think Pammy and Linda will be as adults?
17. Why did this book win the Pulitzer Prize in 1992?

*****

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