QUESTIONS

This novel is composed of two stories: one is about a writer named Marianne Wiggins, who’s written a novel about Edward S. Curtis, a photographer who lived from 1868 to 1952. Curtis took over 40,000 photographs of Native Americans, some of which were included a 20-volume work called The North American Indian, which appeared in 1907.

1. What happens to people like the members of the Curtis family who live in semi-isolation?
2. What is the importance of religion to the inhabitants of the territories?
3. What’s wrong with Ellen, Edward’s mother?
4. In the Curtis story, why are the Indians always in the background and mostly silent?
5. To Clara, the Indians are primitive. “They and their ilk had been drawing stick figures and unenlightened geometrics...four hundred years after the Italian Renaissance in painting. How could anyone ever try to build a bridge across a chasm of perception between two kinds of people, two tribes, as wide as that (p. 106-7)?” Why does Clara feel so uncomfortable around Indians? Does she ever change her opinion?
6. When Clara tells Edward about Greek myths such as Icarus, he asks her what happened to the myths (p. 123). She tells him that people stopped believing in the truth of them. What happens to myths? Why do people stop believing in them? Why do some myths hang on?
7. Why does Edward ignore Clara until the day of his accident? What changes between them after that?
8. Are Edward’s photographs art?
9. Several characters disappear. What are they escaping from? What are they going toward? Do they find what they want in life or end up disillusioned?
10. Why does Wiggins tell the story of Curtis’s and Clara’s relationship from Clara’s point of view, rather than Edward’s?
11. On page 168 Marianne Wiggins says “...if any place can redefine a person’s sense of self it’s our American West.” How does the landscape influence and shape the characters’ attitudes?
12. The fictional Wiggins struggles to understand Curtis. Why do Curtis and his career continue to fascinate her and keep her from abandoning her project?
13. How does Wiggins treat the theme of identity versus appearance?
14. Do the two stories in the novel fit together? How do they complement each other? What themes do they have in common?
15. How do characters in both stories misunderstand what they see?
16. How does the novel address the ideas of how societies change and how individuals become isolated in society?
17. Many of the overlaps in the stories are the result of coincidence. How realistic is this? Did this detract from the novel for you?