Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.

1. What scenes from the novel have been the most impactful for you, and why?

2. Did you suspect Vicky of murder before her confession? Why or why not?

3. How did you feel about Joe when Lila opened the motel-room door?

4. Which storyline held more weight for you: the Buckley murder investigation or Joe’s reconnection with Kathy?

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. Have you ever held onto a “no-contact” rule with someone? What factors did you weigh when deciding whether to keep or break this rule?

2. How would you have responded if a partner had read an important letter addressed to you and kept it hidden for seven months?

3. What does the phrase “home is a person, not a place” (340) mean in your own life?

4. Have you ever revised your understanding of an absent parent, as Joe revises his picture of Toke?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. How does the novel portray small-town policing through Sheriff Kimball, Deputy Calder, and Jeb Lewis, and what tensions does it surface?

2. What does the AP defamation lawsuit against Joe reveal about the position of local reporters covering powerful people?

3. How accurate is Eskens’s portrayal of Jeremy’s autism? To what extent does the narrative infantilize Jeremy?

4. What does Minnesota’s slayer statute suggest about how the law tries to encode moral intuitions about inheritance?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. What are the structural advantages of Joe’s first-person narration? How would a third-person perspective alter the story?

2. How does Eskens use the parallel structure of two trips to Buckley and two trips to Austin to pace Joe’s reckonings?

3. What effect does the deferred revelation of Jeb as Angel’s father have on your reading of his earlier scenes with Joe?

4. When you reread Vicky’s first conversation with Joe at the Snipe’s Nest, knowing what she did at the barn, how does your view of this character change?

Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book.

1. Write the letter Joe might send Lila the morning after she walks past him at the bar exam, in a version where she keeps walking.

2. If Eskens were to write a third Joe Talbert novel set five years later, what unresolved thread from this book would you want it to follow?

3. Imagine Angel waking from her coma at the end of the novel. What is the first conversation she has, and with whom?

4. Recast a single chapter from Vicky’s point of view. Which one would you choose, and what information would you reveal?