BOOKS
OCTOBER
The Forgotten Garden
by Kate Morton
.A girl is abandoned ona ship headed for Australia in the year 1913. She arrives alone with nothing but a small suitcase with clothes and a book of fairytales.
She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday she is told the truth and sets out to trace her real identity.
Her quest leads her to Blackhurst Manor and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family.
It is not, however, until her granddaughter Cassandra takes up the search that all the pieces are assembled.
NOVEMBER
The Diamond Eye
by Kate Quinn
1937 Kyiv. History student Mila organizes her life around her library job and her young son. Hitler's invasion of Ukraine and Russia sets her on a different path. Sent to join the fight, Mila becomes a lethal hunter of Nazis. Soon, Mila becomes a hero and goes from bloody battles on the eastern front to a goodwill tour across America.
Still reeling from war wounds and devastating loss, Mila finds herself isolated in Washington, DC where she becomes unexpected friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady, and a connection with a silent sniper. When an old enemy joins forces with a new foe, Mila finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.
Based on a true story, The Diamond Eye is a haunting novel of heroism, a mother turned soldier and of a woman her found her place in the world and changed the course of history forever.
MEETING INFORMATION
Next Meeting: October 28th
Time: 7:00-8:00 P.M.
Where: Adult Fiction, can meet in alley next to Coldwater weather permitting.
MONTHLY DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. On the night of Nell’s twenty-first birthday, her father Hugh tells her a secret that shatters her sense of self. How important is a strong sense of identity to a person’s life? Was Hugh right to tell her about her past? How might Nell’s life have turned out differently had she not discovered the truth?
2. Did Hugh and Lil make the right decision when they kept Nell?
3. How might Nell’s choice of occupation have been related to her fractured identity?
4. Is it possible to escape the past, or does one’s history always find a way to revisit the present?
5. Eliza, Nell and Cassandra all lose their birth mothers when they are still children. How are their lives affected differently by this loss? How might their lives have evolved had they not had this experience?
6. Nell believes that she comes from a tradition of “bad mothers.” Does this belief become a self-fulfilling prophecy? How does Nell’s relationship with her granddaughter, Cassandra, allow her to revisit this perception of herself as a “bad mother”?
7. Is The Forgotten Garden a love story? If so, in what ways?
8. Tragedy has been described as “the conflict between desire and possibility.” Following this definition, is The Forgotten Garden a tragedy? If so, in what way/s?
9. In what ways do Eliza’s fairy tales underline and develop other themes within the novel?
10. In what ways do the settings in The Forgotten Garden represent or reflect the character’s experiences?