"Ruin and Redemption"

Discussion Questions for your Reading Group/Book Club

1) In which ways do race, class, sex and status impact Lizzie and Derrick's marriage?

2) How do loyalty and faithfulness impact on Lizzie's and Derrick's marriage? What is the difference?

3) In what ways does Derrick's relationship with his father affect his life?

4) Which character do you relate to the most? Why? What do you have in common with that character?

5) How does Lizzie's status as a lady and Derrick's wife impact her life? What do you think Lizzie's life would have been like without Derrick as her husband?

6) Compare Josiah and Mindy's marriage and Lizzie and Derrick's marriage? What are the differences? What are the similarities.

7) How does Esme's presence both help and hurt Lizzie and Derrick's marriage? 

8) Why do you believe Scarlett returned to Lizzie and Derrick's plantation after being home with her father?

9) Lizzie, Scarlett and Esme all share Derrick's love at one point in the story. How does this impact each of the characters in her relationship with the other two? Lizzie and Scarlett? Esme and Scarlett? Esme and Lizzie? In which ways do the characters help each other? In which ways do they compete?

10) Do you notice any instances of karma in the story? Do you see any ways in which the characters suffer the effects of the actions they do to others? What might be examples of karma?

11) What ways do Derrick and Josiah work out their redemption?

12) Compare and contrast life at Josiah's farm and Lizzie's plantation. In what ways is it different for slave and free, lady and gentleman, man and woman, gay and straight?

13) Both Esme and Rebecca are sex workers. Compare and contrast the ways they view their job, their clients and their relationship with their client's families. Which do you agree with more---Esme's policy of transparency and openness with Lizzie? Or Rebecca's policy of discretion and restriction towards her client's wife?

14) Both Josiah and Lizzie are in interracial marriages. Why do you think Josiah and Mindy have a fairly easy time fitting into society while Derrick and Lizzie are persecuted for their relationship?

15) How does Lizzie change after she discovers she is a mulatto? Why do you think Lizzie is unable to accept that her husband does not want to treat her differently?