Sandra Scofield
Author of Novels & a Memoir

Some discussion questions:
1. Tom Riley is an unlikely hero; he doesn't so much earn his good fortune as open himself to it. How do the episodes seem to demand "bravery" and how do his responses move him toward growth?
2. The women are a different story: note the ways that Consolata defies the stereotype of the peasant mother. Divina, too, emerges with complexity, a partner to Riley's resurrection.
What did you think of thie May-December romance? How did the expatriate Texas writer Charlotte "manage" the plot, both as character and as narrator?
3. Scofield says she wrote this novel as a kind of folktale in which the world has perfect order. Riley's opennes parallels the mystic's spiritual patience. In what ways is the novel miraculous?" How is it grounded in reality?