If your book club is reading one of Mindy's books, and has access to a speaker phone and/or Skype, you can arrange for her to call your group. To schedule a call or live teleconference, send an e-mail with your time zone, a contact name and a phone number to mindy(at)mindfriddle.com. Title the message "Book Club" and be sure to put include the date your club meets in the title.

Secret Keepers named a Pulpwood Queens Book Club selection for August.

Since her first novel, The Garden Angel, was published, Mindy has attended in person (and in some cases, virtually, and via conference call) more than 50 book clubs, including: the Salt Lake County Library’s Reader’s Choice book club, the (Freeport, Illinois) Journal Standard newspaper’s book club party, the (Columbia, SC) State newspaper’s Readers Circle, and the Pulpwood Queens Book Club in Jefferson, Texas, the largest “meeting and discussing” book club in the country.

READING GUIDE FOR SECRET KEEPERS
Download reading group guide here (PDF)

1. SECRET KEEPERS includes descriptions of flowers that are real (tongue orchids, Amaranth) as well as imaginary (soul shines, secret keepers). Discuss the plants -- both real and imaginary -- and their effects on the characters and the town.

2. Consider how the epigraph by Katherine Mansfield expresses a major theme in the novel. [“How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you -- you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences -- little rags and shreds of your very life.” ] Emma feels stuck in her hometown of Palmetto -- do other characters as well? Besides geographically, what are some other ways the characters feel “stuck”-- in marriages, careers, illness, relationships?

3. Palmetto is the kind of town where the past is thinly veiled by new development and change, especially to several characters whose memories are triggered by certain places or landmarks. Consider these places and the characters’ varying views of them: Amaranth Estate; McCann Square/Crossroads; Springforth Cemetery; the Confederate Monument; Emma’s doctor’s office; the Hanley’s back yard and “barn.”

4. Discuss some reasons behind Emma and Dora’s  conflicted mother-daughter relationship. How has each responded differently to her own troubled marriage?

5. Bobby’s intense love of science still muscles through his schizophrenia, just as Gordon’s talent for gardening prevails despite his heavy drinking and painful memories of war. Discuss how both characters, outside of the mainstream of society, provide viewpoints that are skewed but insightful about the mysterious flowers and hidden garden. What do they see that the other characters don’t?

6. Kyle, a rebellious, conniving teenager, is also a keen observer of his parents, his grandmother, his uncle, and Jake. How does he change in the course of the novel? 

7. Emma’s son, Will Hanley, died in Vietnam. Her grandfather, William McCann, died in a “firearm mishap.” Consider how both characters, though long dead and “off the pages” of the novel, still figure prominently in the daily lives of Emma, as well as several other characters.

8. Do you find Jake Cary, leader of the Blooming Idiots, a romantic big-hearted character or more feckless, naive businessman? Is he a sympathetic character? Why or why not?

9. Discuss how Dora’s  impulsive, addictive shopping  exposes her underlying emotions and insecurities. Is she having a crisis in faith?

10. Consider the  novel’s ending, and how each character’s life and situation changes. Which of the characters are taking their lives in totally new directions? Which situations aren’t so tidy or decided? Consider what each character yearned for in the opening pages of the novel, and if -- and how -- those yearnings were met. 

11. Identify some comic moments in SECRET KEEPERS. How do the humorous moments thread through the darker topics of grief, regret, illness, death, loneliness?

12. The quote that begins Part IV reads, in part: “The flower is a dying organ…a dying into being.” Do you believe there is a theme of spirituality in the novel? How does the serenity of nature -- and the powerful draw of plants -- figure into the lives of the characters?

. . .

READING GUIDE FOR THE GARDEN ANGEL
A novel by Mindy Friddle

THE GARDEN ANGEL selected for two newspapers' book clubs: The Journal-Standard 's Book Club in Freeport, Illinois and The State's Readers' Circle, in Columbia, South Carolina.

1. In the course of the novel, Cutter and Elizabeth form a strong friendship. What is it that draws them together? In what ways does their friendship change each of their lives? In desperate circumstances, have you ever relied on friends instead of family?

2. Cutter’s home has a strong presence in the novel, as if it were a character. What is the significance of setting in the novel -- Cutter’s ancestral home and neighborhood, the city-swallowed town of Sans Souci, Elizabeth’s suburban ranch? Identify how the theme of “home” as both a sanctuary and a trap weaves through the novel.

3. How would you characterize Elizabeth and Daniel’s marriage? What kind of husband is Daniel? Did you ever sympathize with him? Did you agree with Elizabeth’s decision regarding her marriage at the end of the novel?

4. How do you feel the author portrayed the issue of agoraphobia? Were Elizabeth’s near-debilitating panic attacks believable? Have you, or someone you love, ever suffered from panic attacks?

5. Discuss the betrayals that occur between Daniel and Elizabeth, Cutter and Ginnie, and Elizabeth and Cutter. Were any of the disloyalties -- between husband and wife, siblings, and friends -- more justified than others? By the end of the novel, which of the rifts between the characters have healed?

6. Do you recognize and relate to the family squabble over inheritance that occurs between siblings? Do you think Ginnie and Barry’s insistence that the house be sold a sign of their greediness or practicality? How does the figure of Gran, the family’s dead grandmother, affect Barry, Ginny and Cutter in different ways?

7. Do you agree that Emily Dickinson’s poetry helped to characterize Elizabeth’s plight? How did the selected stanzas, especially in chapters two, twelve and fourteen express Elizabeth’s emotional state? Why do you think the author chose Dickinson’s line, “A Prison gets to be a Friend,” for the epigram?

8. From the first time she appears in chapter two, Elizabeth begins to push herself to take risks and change her life. What is the biggest moment of risk for Elizabeth in the novel? For Cutter?

9. How did Cutter’s jobs help define her as a character? What factors helped her succeed at “the dead beat?” How did Cutter’s working at the Pancake Palace provide readers with insight into the town and its characters?

10. What is the significance of the title, THE GARDEN ANGEL? How did the theme of tending the family cemetery parallel Cutter’s nostalgic view of her family and town? Why do you think Ginnie hated the family cemetery, while Elizabeth loved it?

11. How did minor characters such as Father Bob, Alfred, Jolene and Priscilla Worthington provide comic touches throughout the novel? Were there other minor characters you found eccentric? Memorable? Why?

12. Was Cutter naïve about her relationship with Curt Sams? How did their nostalgic views of the town bring Cutter and Curt together? Should Cutter forgive him?

13. Where could you imagine Elizabeth and Cutter’s lives heading after the novel closes? What about Ginnie? Daniel? How might a sequel to the novel unfold?