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Loving the Dead and Gone
For forty years Aurilla Cutter has tended a clutch of terrible secrets that have turned her mean. A fatal accident becomes the catalyst for the release of the passions, needs, and hurts in everyone affected by her hidden past. Darlene, a seventeen -year-old widow, struggles to reconnect with her dead husband while proving herself still alive. Soon loss and death work their magic, drawing Darlene into an unlikely affair that threatens to upend Aurilla’s family, and sets loose Aurilla’s own memories of longing and infidelity.
As Aurilla’s forbidden and heartbreaking story of love, death, and repeated loss alternates with Darlene’s, the divide of generations and time narrows and collapses, building to the unlikely collision of two women’s yearnings, which will free them, and those around them, from the past. Loving the Dead and Gone is a lyrical intergenerational novel that explores how both grief and love are the ties that bind.
These book club discussion questions were provided by the author, Judith Turner-Yamamoto.
Book club questions for Loving the Dead and Gone by Judith Turner-Yamamoto
Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.
Place is an outsized character in Loving the Dead and Gone. How is sense of place conveyed in the novel? Recall a scene where you felt it most.
How does rural insularity shape the novel and the choices available to its protagonists?
The stories we don’t tell people about ourselves often matter even more than the things we do say. What does this mean for the characters in Loving the Dead and Gone, in your own life?
Sometimes characters have to move backward in order to move forward. How did each character’s processing of their past shape their break from the bonds of the past?
Forgiveness and acceptance—of the self, of others—is a theme. How do they play out in the lives of the characters?
In some ways Aurilla is very much of her time; in other ways she seems quite progressive. How would you characterize her, and why?
Aurilla tells Darlene “Death can make you over if you let it.” What does she mean by this, and how does the advice relate to both of their lives?
How did accessing the inner lives of each character help explain their actions and path?
What surprised you most about the novel and why?
Are there lingering questions evoked by the book that you are still thinking about?
Loving the Dead and Gone Book Club Questions PDF
Click here for a printable PDF of the Loving the Dead and Gone discussion questions
Loving the Dead and Gone, A Mariel Hemingway Book Club Selection
Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medalist:SOUTH-Best Regional Fiction
Eric Hoffer Book Awards Grand Prize Short List; Honorable Mention: General Fiction
Historical Novel Award, North Carolina Society of Historians
“A bittersweet fantastical debut.” -Publishers Weekly