Timbrel archives: MW Book Club

The MW Book Club promotes discussion of ethical, spiritual, and relational issues relevant to Mennonite women’s lives through works of contemporary fiction. Titles are chosen for their insights into the human condition, their beauty of language, and the questions they raise for Christian readers.

Suggestions for starting a book club, tips for discussion leaders, and discussion questions are available in a downloadable booklet (you will need Adobe Acrobat). It is designed to be printed on two sheets of paper, back to back, and folded in half. Discussion questions are included for: Stones from the River (Ursula Hegi), Back When We Were Grownups (Anne Tyler), The Ladies Auxiliary (Tova Mirvis), and Dreaming Water (Gail Tsukiyama).

Katya or The Russlander by Sandra Birdsell
Timbrel, September-October 2005

Set during the Russian Revolution, Sandra Birdsell’s novel, Katya (first released with the title, The Russlander), opens with a newspaper account of a massacre at an estate owned by the (fictional) Sudermann family. Also killed were members of the Vogt family, whose father served as estate manager. The story then goes back in time, leading up to the violent events and then following 15-year-old Katya Vogt, who survives.

Marlene Epp: Sandra Birdsell is a well-known Canadian writer whose ancestral roots are with Russian Menno-nites and also with Manitoba Metis (aboriginal-French roots). She is not part of the Mennonite community but this book represents her exploration of her own past. Thus readers were curious to see how she, as an “outsider,” would treat this subject.
    I was struck by her clear and candid treatment of the social and economic class divide amongst the Mennonites. Historians have always known that some Russian Mennonites were very wealthy and some were poor but this fact has been glossed over or downplayed in most historical treatments of the period.
    In Katya, those class differences are made plain in the lives of the Sudermanns versus the Vogts. I think the author does a good job of portraying the complexities in these relationships, showing that there is kinship between the families because they are all Mennonite and in the friendship between two of the girls. But the social hierarchy and power relationships become very clear in the denial of Peter Vogt his own land as promised and in the subtle portrayals of where the lines are drawn in social interaction and opportunities for the members of each family.

Florence Driedger: I was struck by some of the same things. There are many subtle comments that reflect the lack of sensitivity to those of supposed lower rank, and also the arrogance of some of those with wealth.
    To this day some of this has carried forward in attitudes toward others. For example, a friend of ours was traveling with a group to Ukraine. A fellow traveler was a descendent of a wealthy Mennonite family from that region. She just expected others to serve her. What a sad life she must have lived.

Karen Yoder: It took a while before I realized that the two families were both Mennonite. I didn’t realize there would have been that big a social and economic divide in the Mennonite “classes.”
    Even though we don’t have that distinct a divide in our congregations today, I believe we do divide ourselves according to wealth and education. We often feel obligated to help others because of the example of the early church, but we do it grudgingly, thinking, “They should be better stewards. . . .”

Marlene: I also think Birdsell does a good job of portraying the growing civil discontent in the country and animosity towards Mennonites in their own areas, as well as demonstrating that Mennonites had different views of how to respond to WWI. Some felt it important to hold to principles of nonviolence while others felt that the extreme violence of the times called for other action. . . .

Carol Honderich: One of the more bizarre descriptions for me was of the family photo that included the recently deceased mother (run over and killed by a horse and wagon), who was held upright, in place, for the photo by family members. She had a “vacant” expression on her face. Yes, I guess being deceased at the time of the photo would tend to make you look less expressive.
    When this story was introduced in the book, it said that since the photographer had been hired and was on his way, they decided to go ahead with the family photo—obviously as best they could. This kind of “going on with business no matter what” attitude—was this, is this, a Mennonite thing?

Florence: That story did not surprise me. In many Mennonite communities the focus on saving money was so strong that I could see this happening.
One person I know constantly surprises me by how much this attitude still exists even (continued) though he has been out of this environment for years and years. He monetizes everything including time, people, effort, help. I guess that is where understanding Christian values in some depth and using them to analyze one’s actions, thoughts, and perspectives are important. Too often I find we do a superficial job of this.
    I wonder, too, how often this still happens where we first ask, “Can we afford this, how much will it cost?” rather than asking, “What is the right thing to do?”—and then asking, “How can we do it?” This opens up many possibilities and opportunities. The other often closes the door.

Carol: Yes! Your last paragraph helps me understand some of the attitudes that I kept encountering in the book that were troublesome for me! It was the lack of a positive, open, accepting, encouraging way of being and communicating and sharing. And I’m sure that is how it was, with fear hanging over everyone’s heads. Stiff, rigid, formal, patriarchal, etc., etc.

Marlene: Bizarre as this might seem, I have heard other instances of including a deceased person in a Russian Mennonite family photo. In one case, a mother (I think) had died; the body was propped up for the picture, and pity the ashen-faced child who stood directly in front of her.
    I wonder if it was a certain stoicism and also sense that death was such a constant reality—not the kind of discomfort and avoidance of death that we have now. When I read about this historical period (WWI up to WWII), I am always struck by the ability of people to go about semi-normal activities in the midst of extreme violence and fear—to go to church, prepare zwieback [buns], write letters, plan for the future. . . .
    I re-read the massacre scene last night and thought it seemed unreal. But I have read very similar happenings in non-fiction [. . . such as] 90 people killed by bandits in one night. My grandmother also witnessed such an attack, in which some menfolk in her family were killed.
    Mennonites have barely begun to scratch the surface in terms of the impact of this violence over generations—survivor’s guilt (why did I get away and others not?), psychological death for women who were gang-raped but not killed.

Florence: A friend some 25 years older than I still cannot be alone in the evening; her parents were shot while she, then a preschooler, clung to her father’s legs. It is amazing how in spite of all the turmoil people have resilience and continue to live, live to old age, and not lose faith. I think we can learn from this in our work with refugees, and how we deal with the horrendous experiences people go through.

Karen: Shortly after my family moved to Mississippi in 1973 an old white Southerner told my dad, “The classes of people here are: the whites, the Mennonites, the coloreds, the dogs, and then the Indians.” These are Choctaws, descendents of Indians who hid and were left behind when the rest of their people were driven to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears.
    The Choctaws are still struggling to come out of the repression that has been put on them all their lives. Alcoholism, even suicide, is still the norm, but this is slowly fading as people are coming to Christ and getting an education. . . .
    Faith plays a big part. At a recent women’s Bible study on the reservation one lady said, “Our people have gone through a holocaust but it’s not in the history books. But the way to come out of that is to forgive.”

Lois Kenagy: In the 1940s I worked as a secretary for Harold S. Bender, then a vice president for Mennonite Central Committee. Eventually this led to working for two years in a refugee camp at Gronau, Germany.
    Here were Mennonites who knew hardships I could barely imagine. The persecution and hardship they experienced in Russia during the Stalin years was so intense—and their recent flight from Russia so difficult—that they rarely talked about the trauma of the earlier years during the Russian Revolution.
    My recollection of the older women was of their gratitude for safety, for adequate food, for the opportunity for public worship, and their anticipation of migrating to Canada, hopefully to be with relatives.
    Encountering these refugees was life-changing for me. Never again could I be unaware of suffering, even if it was half a world away.

• Eileen Klassen Hamm of Saskatoon coordinates MCC Saskatchewan’s Women’s Concerns program and works on the family farm.
• Susan E. Janzen pastors New Hope Mennonite Church, Omaha, Neb., and chairs the MW Publications Committee.
• Heidi Regier Kreider pastors Emmanuel Mennonite Church, Gainesville, Fla. She lived in the Congo/Zaire from ages 4-15.
• Hulene Montgomery and her husband, Michael Graham, are Mennonite Central Committee country representatives in Burkina Faso and members of Kitchener-Waterloo (Ont.) House Church Assemblies.
• Carole Sawatzky, Winnipeg, Man., is a community occupational therapist and member of Fort Garry Mennonite Fellowship.

Susan E. Janzen: Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, The Poisonwood Bible, tells the stories of Orleanna, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May, the wife and daughters of Nathan Price, an evangelical Baptist preacher who takes his family to the Belgian Congo in 1959. What begins as a one-year assignment becomes a life-altering experience for each of the Prices. The novel is not Christian fiction, but faith issues permeate its pages.
I found it somewhat ironic that Nathan’s actions dictate many of the plot twists, yet his point of view is never explored directly. How might the book have been different if Nathan had been given a voice?

Heidi Regier Kreider: I found Nathan to be simultaneously infuriating and hilarious. But I did wish for times when he would have to explain for the damage he was doing, times when Nathan would be forced to come to terms with the havoc he left in his wake (or maybe the villagers just snickered behind his back?). He never comes to realize the truth.

Hulene Montgomery: I have to say I wasn’t very curious about Nathan. His character seems to represent not so much a person as a phenomenon: the earnest but misguided attempts to save Africa, whether through colonialism, missionary zeal, or development dreams. Central to this phenomenon is the absolute certainty of what Africa needs without ever asking or listening to her wisdom.
The male voice I wanted to hear was that of Anatole, the young Congolese man. What must he have thought when he was interpreting Nathan’s sermons? Why did he reach out to help this family? Where did he find his strength, hope, and grace?

Heidi: Anatole was perhaps the most noble character—or did he betray his own people and traditions by letting new ways into his village?

Hulene: The other voice I longed to hear (and I imagined it ringing with gentle laughter) was Mama Mwanza. How many Mama Mwanza’s have I known?—these wise, generous women who quietly take care of the stranger and those in need without them ever knowing their benefactor. What is it that led Mama Mwanza to sacrifice food for her own family to care for the Prices? There is an African saying that strangers are like children. Is this how Anatole and Mama Mwanza viewed the Prices?

Carole Swatzky: I struggled with Kingsolver’s characterization of the five Price women. I began by assuming that they carry equal weight in the story. Wrong, wrong, wrong! The twins, two halves of a whole, remain the dominant voices of the novel.
Note that only Leah becomes a mother. She gives birth to a new nation, a generation which carries the genes of both cultures. King-solver is very deliberate in her use of motherhood symbols, and I have to think she has made Leah a mother for very specific reasons.

Heidi: I certainly came to identify with Leah as the book went along. I admire her attempts to work for justice and rightness. At the same time, she reminds me of Peace Corps or MCC workers who—in their own way—are planning to change the world overnight. She seems a little too romanticized. The character begs the question of whether outsiders/ Westerners can really be part of the redemption/salvation of Africa—or only are the problem?

Eileen Klassen Hamm: Certainly the twins are the most intriguing characters. Leah has the ability to bridge contexts more easily. She is inquiring and imaginative, dedicated and loving. But Adah, Adah is the person who most truly sees. Adah understands much about the people around her. I thoroughly enjoyed her backwards/forwards language.

Carole: Then there’s Rachel. As soon as the first sentence pops out of her mouth I despise her.

Eileen: Did Rachel learn her black-and-white worldview from Nathan? She has clear opinions and cannot easily be swayed. She doesn’t allow herself to take on others’ pain.
In many ways, Rachel has learned her “role” very well from her North American commercial upbringing. She looks good, does well financially, has men at her beck and call. But she is not content or fulfilled, she doesn’t have people to love or to love her. Perhaps she is not able to love—that’s not something our society teaches very well. Much of my theological work and spiritual discipline focuses on thinking past the “Rachel” response to a more just and peaceable and relational response.

Heidi: What about the character of God? Is God just an illusion of Nathan’s ego? According to Adah, God “is everything, then. God is a virus. . . . God is an ant.” We Chris-tians believe that God is at work in history, interested in us personally and as a community. How do these beliefs compare with the portraits of God in The Poisonwood Bible? It seems to me that Fate or Africa or Human Politics/Greed is presented as more powerful than God. . . .
This book left me with so many impressions. At times I felt like I was reading some of my own early impressions of Africa: children want-ing to feel my straight, blond hair; watching women carry incredible loads on their heads; sitting in trees and eating sticky, juicy mangoes.

Hulene: I loved the description of Leah climbing a tree to reach for a guava and the image of the juice running down from her mouth to stain her shirt forever.

• Barbel Goertz was born in Danzig, Germany, and can remember Hitler’s 1939 arrival in the city by motorcade. Retired, she lives in Colorado Springs, Colo.
• Rachel Waltner Goossen, a historian, is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Kansas and Bethel College. She is the author of Women Against the Good War.
• Evanna Hess and her husband, Dan, of Lancaster, Pa., are serving with Mennonite Central Committee in Albania and Serbia.
• Wanda Kraybill recently finished MCC assignments in Egypt and Iraq. She lives in Philadelphia, Pa., and works at the Center for Educational Exchange with Vietnam.
• Bonnie Loewen lives, works, and writes on a family farm of three generations near Steinbach, Man.

Stones From the River chronicles life in a small German town during the world wars. Its protagonist, Trudi Montag, is a dwarf and the town gossip.

Evanna Hess: Reading this novel, my thoughts often went to the Balkans. The people in Burgdorf don’t want Trudi to dwell on the war, saying, “We want to go forward.” I was somewhat surprised to notice a similar response from the Albanians after they returned to Kosovo. It seemed too painful to deal with what they had just experienced.
But how are people affected by the distortions of war? Is it important to have the truth revealed for reconciliation or for people to be able to live in peace with themselves?

Barbel Goertz: Being German, I felt very defensive of Hegi’s repeated accusation that Germans did not want to talk about the atrocities. In fact, people were stunned to learn the facts after the end of the war; for us in the Russian zone this whole revelation came much slower and had to be sorted out of the communist propaganda. We all had to come to terms with those horror stories.

Wanda Kraybill: One image carried through the book was the title idea of stones in the river. I continue to ponder the moment when Trudi’s mother showed Trudi the place on her knee where gravel had been imbedded; those bumps carried the memory and the guilt of her extramarital affair. “The skin had closed across the tiny wounds like the surface of the river after you toss stones into the waves. Only you knew they were there. Unless you told.”
When do we choose to reveal those stones to others? When does doing that save us? After being attacked, Trudi names and throws stones into the river; later she piles stones into an altar, once more naming her pain but this time along the river rather than in it. How do the people of Germany name the stones they carry from history? How do we?

Rachel Waltner Goossen: Although building up stone cairns can be a form of gaining some control over evil, building up monuments can also give recognition to that which is honorable, noble, triumphant over evil. I was deeply moved by my visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., this fall. Exhibits chronicle the story of “the resistance”—people who resisted Nazi domination. Some were like the Montags, ordinary Germans who hid people in their homes; but all kinds of stories illustrate what was a complex web of compassion in the midst of carnage.

Evanna: Unfortunately, such stories are not as popular as the stories of atrocities. In Kosovo and Albania we’ve heard chilling accounts which I find almost incomprehensible. How can a person brutally kill someone who was their teacher or neighbor down the street? It’s oversimplifying to say there are good and bad people in every group. What should be done to teach children to resist the violent nature that is somewhere in each of us? This is a question not only for countries with deeply divided societies but also for North America.

Barbel: Trudi realizes that we are “all accomplices.” I found this quite insightful. How responsible are we for what happened? Who is free of guilt?
These questions struck me anew when reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I did not hear of any national guilt feeling about Eisenhower’s intervention in Zaire. And I could cry out of frustration when I hear Clinton denying the ban on manufacturing landmines.

Evanna: In this MCC assignment I have wondered about what my responsibility is and what the responsibility of the church should be. Wanting to be neutral is difficult when the sides don’t seem even, but now I need to show the same Christian compassion to the Serbs that came easily for the Albanians.

Rachel: Experience has shown how difficult is MCC’s longstanding goal of “serving people on both sides” regardless of political allegiances. But though we may strive for that ideal, we need to be aware that Mennonites’ responses in wartime have often been problematic. For one example, see John Thiesen’s recent book on German-born Mennonites in Paraguay who remained sympathetic to Hitler after migrating (Mennonite and Nazi? Attitudes Among Mennonite Colonists in Latin America, 1933-1945, Pandora Press, 1999).

Wanda: Returning to the book’s first few lines, I would like to retrace how Trudi moves from being so earnest in her prayers and belief to the point where God became “ineffective.” Who is God to her by the novel’s end?

Bonnie Loewen: What I read in this book is a brutal critique of people’s institutional creation and worship of their own picture of God. Funny that Hegi had to drive the point home by having the one priest who Trudi adores carry the name Adolf—the good priest rising above idolatry even if he had the idol’s name—offering some room for those of us who call ourselves Christians.

Evanna: If I had lived through the atrocities we heard from the Albanian refugees, I wonder how my faith would have been tested. When lives have been broken by war or other violence, how can God be perceived?

Wanda: In Iraq I was amazed at how so many people would layer their stories of suffering with the Arabic expression, “Allah Karim”: God is generous. Initially this made me quite uncomfortable. It seemed naive to speak of how their child kept fainting at school because she hadn’t had enough to eat and then say, “Allah Karim.” I wondered if they were trying to remind God to be generous.
Finally I began asking trusted friends why they would say it. I’ll never forget the response of a middle-aged Muslim man. “We humans,” he said, “we never have enough faith. God is generous not in the fact that we are suffering but that we are given strength to face it.”

Bonnie: As I read Hegi’s insistence about rigorous engaged memory, and as I reflect on my own journey toward healing in coming out of an abusive marriage, her questions and my questions about “why” become an integral part of the journey.
    If Trudi had remained in that place of revenge, wishing death or pain on her perpetrators, or if she silenced all her pain, her hard struggle would be in vain. But I think her struggle with the whys— why me, why this marginalized, physically repulsive me, why is the world so full of Helmut Eberhardts, why do loved ones die, why was my mother crazy—eventually opened her to that place where she could see that what so many wanted to reject was actually her gift, her gift of uniqueness not only in her body but also in her role as “Messenger.”
    With deep knowledge of her self and her gifts, she sees the truth within the stories she is given. I hear in Trudi a commitment to be faithful, not to her own agenda that so easily becomes tangled up with self-protection or self-congratulation, but with the truth that begs to be told.

• Elizabeth Goering, North Newton, Kan., is a retired elementary school teacher. She is part of the Dorcas Society women’s group at the Eden Mennonite Church in Moundridge.
• Marian Brendle Hostetler, Goshen, Ind., served nine years as Executive Secretary for Women’s Missionary and Service Commission. She works at Provident Bookstore and as a spiritual director
• Patricia G. King is assistant professor of English at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va.
• Trish Kornelsen, St. Catharines, Ont., is currently a full-time mom to three sons. From 1992-1999 she was Executive Director of the fledgling Victim Offender Reconciliation Program Niagara.

In The Ladies Auxiliary, Batsheva, a free-spirited single mother and a convert to Judaism, moves into a close-knit Orthodox community in Memphis, Tenn.

Patricia King: Many readers from Mennonite communities will see parallels in The Ladies Auxiliary. The novel illustrates how, within this small, tightly boundaried community of Orthodox Jews, there are “communities within communities.” Elite inner circles of women occupy a position of power, usually because of their husbands’ positions or their families’ long-established presence in this community. On the other end of the spectrum are those people who are just barely “inside” the larger community, who occupy a fairly tenuous position there and know it.
It is not surprising that these “insider-outsiders” are the first to welcome Batsheva, the consummate outsider, and to be most faithful to her throughout the story. Yet only the strongest members of this group have the power to break with tradition and take Batsheva’s side.
This is shown most clearly when the Ladies Auxiliary gathers to vote Batsheva out of her teaching job. Mimi, the rabbi’s wife, could have made a difference; the women were waiting for her word before they voted. “Insider-outsider” figures like Rena quietly sympathize with Batsheva, but they will not stand up for her because doing so makes them even more socially vulnerable.

Trish Kornelson: Still, I wonder how many “insider” women truly believe they belong. If they aren’t hiding (forbidden non-kosher) shrimp salad in their freezer, they are expressing their individuality with open-toed sandals and dreaming of tight sequined dresses—or even, like the rabbi’s son Yosef, struggling with the direction of their life. Perhaps they feel that by focusing on Batsheva’s shortcomings they could avoid facing the areas in their own lives where they are less than “perfect.”
Comments like Tziporah’s, “We’re religious. No one we know would do anything like that” (page 33), are so harmful. They assert that religious people don’t have problems with our marriages, drink, smoke, question our religion, and so on. It’s as if we are somehow above trouble and temptation. When there are problems such attitudes make it hard to turn to the people who should support you.

Patricia: In this light I found myself wanting to tell Batsheva, “You go, girl!” for shaking up those old stuck-in-a-rut biddies and daring to truly examine and live out her faith. But at other times I felt sympathy for the more conventional women.

Elizabeth Goering: I did, too. These are women bred in that patriarchal Orthodox mode, and what they are is what they were reared to be.

Trish: Batsheva wants to belong to the community and yet remains oblivious to the thousands of years of tradition that held the community together. I certainly would not suggest that Batsheva needed to assimilate to her surroundings but she owes the community greater respect and sensitivity to their traditions.
The community, on the other hand, seems to be grasping at their traditions like a drowning person might reach for a lifejacket.

Marian Hostetler: These are the choices religious communities must make: where do we adjust, and where preserve the values and territory which protects our own identity and gifts?

Elizabeth: Consider the controversy over the mikvah, the ritualistic bath for women. Tziporah hates it, and so to have Batsheva come barging in, almost illegally (as an unmarried woman), thoroughly enjoying the ritual and claiming a refreshing of body and spirit which Tziporah cannot claim, is akin to heresy for her. I’m asking myself just what my reactions would be if one of my basic religious tenets were so lightly regarded.
Tziporah is among those who seek to oust Batsheva—and I can’t excuse that—but I want to understand what condemned her to harbor such an unforgiving spirit. Tziporah, considered most religious of all, feels pushed into a corner, with no choice but to build an “ark” around her beliefs.

Patricia: Is the implication of this story that communities this closed really have no room at all for difference? Does allowing one alteration of a long-established practice (like letting Batsheva use the mikvah) open up a crack in the structure of the church that eventually turns into a wrenching, wide-open split? I hope not. The book doesn’t really answer that question.

Elizabeth: For Mennonites it will not be easy to overcome our established conceptions in our new denomination. We all play the “Mennonite game” but in different ways. I probably can’t relate to any of you because of my General Conference background, yet I feel a part of all of you because of the larger “tent” that envelopes us—that of our belief in God under the auspices of that peculiar organization, the Mennonite Church.

Patricia: That’s nicely put. I like the embracing of diversity-within-unity. Or unity-despite-diversity!

Marian: Do you think Batsheva is presented in too good a light, as though she was right and the community had to get “with it”?

Patricia: Good question. At first I wondered if this was just going to be a story about a gifted, visionary outsider coming in and redeeming all these sticks-in-the-mud. I was glad the story became more complicated. For me, knowing that Batsheva had had an affair made her more believable. In the first half of the novel she seems just a little too saccharine, too perfect. Even though I was sad and aghast to learn this story from Batsheva’s past, it did push her character out of that “too positive” light.

Trish: I think Batsheva serves mostly to remind us that whether we are born into a faith tradition or whether we choose it, it needs to be nurtured and not taken for granted. We can’t get lazy in our faith or just go through the motions—we need to be active participants.

Patricia: Yes, this is one of the main themes: the “sin” of focusing overmuch on form and ignoring content or meaning—letting oneself get so caught up in the outward trappings of faith that one forgets entirely why one is doing it.

Marian: This reminds me of another parallel I see with Mennonites—the inability to question things without really upsetting the applecart. Josef had to leave in order to look at his own questions and doubts in safety. Tziporah felt a compulsion to organize a special class to “combat the forces that were causing our girls to rebel,” in spite of Mimi’s caution about placing blame.

Patricia: It struck me again and again that these Orthodox ladies defer to the men of the community when they don’t understand a law or practice of their faith. They tend to simply accept these out of a kind of blind faith. Not having engaged intellectually in their own faith probably forces them to dwell solely on the outer, superficial manifestations of their faith—knowing how to keep a kosher household, dressing appropriately, etc.

Trish: Throughout most of the book it is very difficult for the characters to look at themselves. They are concerned with how others see them and they are quick to judge. Even when Helen is literally surrounded by mirrors in the store’s dressing room she doesn’t see herself. She sees Batsheva, she sees herself squeezing into a red dress, she assumes Batsheva sees her as old and stodgy, she sees herself defined by the number of relatives she has in the community (she couldn’t be auxiliary president because another woman had more relatives voting)—but she doesn’t really look at her true reflection in the mirror.

Marian: By the end several characters are thinking thoughts new to them and even catching glimpses of themselves in the mirror. We just hope the mirror is true and not the “fun house” variety. . . . I did wonder: Where are the mirrors around me? Do I ever look seriously?

Trish: The author shows that change is possible, but it’s painful. We cannot change others; we must change ourselves. If we are unable or unwilling to look within ourselves then nothing will change.

* * * * * * * *

Cover: Crow Lake Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Adapted from www.readinggroupguides.com.

1. In an interview, author Mary Lawson said that for her, the greatest and most tragic loss in the story is not the death of the parents but the loss of the close relationship between Matt and Kate. Why do you think Matt was able to “move on” with his life and the events after his parents’ death so much more quickly than Kate? To what extent is contentment in any circumstance a choice of attitude, and to what degree does it depend on grace alone?

2. How do you imagine things would have turned out if the children had been separated, as Aunt Annie had arranged? How do you think it would have benefited and/or impeded their growth as individuals and as a family? Who would have benefited most? Least?

3. Kate says her family abided by the “Eleventh Commandment”—“Thou Shalt Not Emote.” What are results from this rule? Have you witnessed real life examples of families living by such a rule—in your own family or others?

4. Great-grandmother Morrison's love of learning set the standard against which Kate judged everyone around her. What do you think Great-grandmother Morrison would have thought of Kate's disappointment in Matt? Why? What attitudes about education have been prevalent in your family?

5. “Traumatic though it is, I think the accident is the making of Luke,” Lawson said in an interview. “From being the family problem, he becomes the family solution.” What do you think would have happened if the accident hadn’t taken place? What are other examples of sacrifices made by different characters? What has Christian religion taught us about sacrifice? What does that word, sacrifice, mean to you?

6. Matt sees problems clearly and is realistic about solving them, whereas Luke is content to wait for things to work themselves out. Given the situation they were in, what were the advantages and disadvantages of each frame of thinking?

7. Trace the cycle of violence in the Pye family. What, if anything, could have broken the cycle? What could the community have done to help? In what ways could your church help people in your community who are affected by domestic abuse? What stands in your way?

8. What messages – positive and negative – about farming or rural life are presented in the book?

9. Compare and contrast the relationship between Daniel and Kate with the relationship between Matt and Marie. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each couple?

10. What did you think of Mrs. Stanovich, the most prominent Christian character in the story? What could Kate and she teach each other in the different ways they deal with hardship?

Go to an interview with the author.

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Timbrel Archives: Mennonite Women Book Club

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Mennonite Women Book Club