Copy Boy

You think you’re a body, but you’re not—you’re a kind of electricity—though you’ve got to fill the right body to go anywhere, do anything important. That’s how seventeen-year-old Jane explains it to herself.

Manipulated by her mother and urged by the voice in her head of her dead twin brother Benjamin, she hits her father with a crowbar, leaving him for dead in an irrigation ditch and escaping to San Francisco. But in 1937, the height of the Great Depression, there are almost no jobs for girls, so Jane turns herself into Benny and gets hired as a newspaper copy boy.

She begins to climb the ladder at the newspaper, gaining validation, skill, and connections with the artists and thinkers of her day, until her father’s photograph appears on the paper’s front page, his arm around a girl who’s been beaten into a coma, one block from Jane’s newspaper—hit in the head with a crowbar.

Jane’s got to find him before he finds her, and before everyone else finds her out. She’s got to protect her invented identity. This is what Jane thinks she wants. It’s definitely what her dead brother Benjamin wants.

This discussion guide was shared and sponsored in partnership with She Writes Press.

Book club questions for Copy Boy by Shelley Blanton-Stroud

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

Scientists suggest that our experiences and those of our ancestors live on in our DNA, affecting our and our children’s health and behavior. Is that true for Jane? Can she escape biology or family history? Can any of us?

What influence does Daddy have on Jane? What do they have in common?

What do you think about Momma after learning about her childbirth at fifteen years old? Does this explain the way she treats Jane? Should Jane continue to tie herself to such a parent? Why or why not?

How do you explain the voice in Jane’s head? How does this voice affect what she does, who she becomes?

What should Jane’s obligation to her sister be? What kind of mother would Jane make?

Does Jane really have to pretend to be a boy to succeed? Could she have earned the same opportunities as a girl? Why or why not? Does any part of her situation seem familiar today?

What do you expect a masculine character to do and be? What do you expect a feminine character to do and be? How do the characters in the novel match or challenge those expectations?

Jane becomes a skillful liar. These lies lead to her lifelong career success. How does lying help her, and how might it hurt?

Grete crosses boundaries to make the best, most moving, most powerful photographs, arguing that facts are less necessary than truth. What do you think about fact versus truth?

Some characters in the book focus on basic survival and hunger. Others work for worldly success. How do they get what they want? What are they willing to discard to win? Is it worthwhile? What have you had to give up to achieve what you want?

Vee may be the only character who risks herself solely on behalf of others. How do you explain what makes a person altruistic?

The Okies living along the side of the road are despised and blamed for local problems. How might ongoing generations of such families feel about field-working migrants and unhomed people today, and why?

Copy Boy Book Club Questions PDF

Click here for a printable PDF of the Copy Boy discussion questions