by Joanna Rose
When the end has come and also gone, there is a surprising moment left for a breath, for a person to stand alone at the edge of a continent, the waves’ edges cast in dark silver light. She felt the west in her face, the east at her back, and she was so sorry.
The clouds broke apart and were lit up by the moon that she couldn’t see, the clouds’ edges cast in dark silver light. There were patches of stars. Sky and water, the same.
15: JUST STORIES
The empty shelves in the lobby of Ruby’s Roadhouse were a sign. Miss Mimi’s books boxed up and stored at the Raritan Valley U-Store-It in Cranbury were a sign. The British Columbia Grant Initiative for Rural Library Projects was a sign.
She decided to use FedEx one last time, and when the big blue and white truck arrived with twenty-eight boxes of books, all the kids were lined up, waiting on the porch of Ruby’s Roadhouse. Father Lucke sat at the desk. He poured schnapps into his hot chocolate, and into hers.
She opened the boxes. Marie stacked books up, certain books in front of certain shelves.
There was religion and nature and history, and a lot of books about books, and books about words. There were big books about art and architecture, and there were atlases. There were books about how to take photographs and how to grow gardens and how to drink tea and how to name the birds.
“Alphabetical by author’s last name,” Pattianne told the older kids. “Biography by subject.”
Fiction. Easy. Poetry. Easy.
“G comes before J,” she said to the smaller kids. “P comes before T.”
Lakshmi passed around the stamp pads with dark green ink, and the rubber stamps―Ruby’s Roadhouse Lending Library.
“Just stamp anywhere inside the front cover,” she said.
Maya had her own stamp pad, in the shape of a heart, that said My Pretty Pony. “It’s pink,” she said. The ink was neon bright. She had it on her fingers, her pointy nose. “Please?” she said. “Can’t we make some pink? Maybe this that’s just stories, could it be pink?”
Pattianne said yes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joanna Rose is the author of the award-winning novel Little Miss Strange, which earned the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Other work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Windfall Journal, Cloudbank, Artisan Journal, Northern Lights, Oregon Humanities, High Desert Journal, VoiceCatcher, Calyx, and Bellingham Review. Her essay “That Thing With Feathers” was cited as Notable in 2015 Best American Essays. She established the Powell’s Books reading series and curated it for fifteen years. She is an Atheneum Fellow in Poetry at the Attic Institute and cohosts the prose critique group Pinewood Table. She also works with youth through Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools and with Young Musicians & Artists. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and, at any given time, several dogs.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To all these people who picked me up hitchhiking and gave me a ride partway down the road—thank you.
Laura Stanfill, you are joy in the world. Stevan Allred—partner in story at the other end of the table. My Dreamies—Kate Gray, Yuvi Zalkow, Jackie Shannon Hollis, Cecily Patterson, Mark Lawton, fellow travelers in time and space, page after page, sentence by sentence, word by word, Thursday after Thursday. The people who have shared time and language with me at Pinewood Table and The Attic and Soapstone and Dangerous Writers. Tom Spanbauer, always. Erin Leonard for telling the important hilarious truth. Candy Mulligan, who was there that night. I wish you were here now. Geneia Jameson for your enduring presence in my life for over fifty years, and for the peace of the River Hag Ranch. And Diana Lee Latter to the east. And Terry Wolfe to the south. Debra Moser for teaching me how to be a friend. Lorraine Bahr for being my Queen of Wands. Word Sisters—Donna Prinzmetal, Penelope Scambly Schott, Andrea Hollander, Maggie Chula for the hopeful moments of Monday morning poems. Lincoln women for one quiet week each summer when I am not afraid to be afraid. Elizabeth Stewart twenty years late. Maya Myers the Scrabble Cop. Gigi Little for Bullfrog/Frisco/Rico Suave/Uncle Dog—you got all of him. Early readers—Carolyn Altman, Diane Jackson, Kevin Burke. Greg Knapp—The Keep on Truckin’ Mime Troupe & Gospel Quartet is officially disbanded. I’m sorry you couldn’t stay. Marie Knapp Heath and Bobby Knapp—now we are three. And Tina Knapp—we’re keeping you. Literary Arts for being a beacon and a home. And every brave high school writer who looked at me like I was crazy and then did the assignment anyway.
READING GROUP GUIDE
1. Pattianne has an abortion but doesn’t define herself by it. Would you call her a feminist? Why or why not? Would she ever call herself a feminist?
2. In the earliest drafts of A Small Crowd of Strangers, Michael Brynn didn’t have a point of view. Why do you think the author changed her mind and gave him one? What context and insight does his voice bring to the story?
3. What do you think the title refers to? A particular small crowd or several of them? Have you ever felt lonely when surrounded by people?
4. As an author, Joanna Rose is known for putting humanity on the page with humor and insight. What are some of the ways she uses language to make her characters come alive on the page? Consider her use of description, dialogue, and particular objects as you answer the question.
5. Why has Bullfrog earned a prominent place on the cover of A Small Crowd of Strangers? Talk about his relationship with Pattianne. What does he represent in her life?
6. Bookseller James Crossley said, “Despite my natural pessimism, this book broke down my defenses and set me up to root for a well-earned, conventional kind of happy ending. But then it took a turn and became an altogether different story, leaving me to sputter along with the characters, ‘Unfair—this is not what I was expecting.’ I was crushed. And then it found its way to another kind of happy ending, a richer, more satisfying one than I’d wanted in the first place.” What do you think about Pattianne’s journey over the course of this novel? Were you surprised by where life takes her? Did you expect a different ending—or several endings? Think about your own life. Are you where you intended to be or, like Pattianne, someplace you never imagined?
7. Pattianne misunderstands the world around her over and over again, often by missing warning signs or expecting the best, and these mistakes all have consequences. What are some of them?
8. Pattianne considers religion thoroughly in the novel, not just through the prism of her new husband’s belief system, but at the New Age bookstore and while playing Bible Scrabble in a convenience store. What would you say she believes in? Do you agree that the novel is a “slightly sideways spiritual journey,” and if so, how?
