“School.”
“Oh. Right. School. She’s not as little as she used to be.”
“Who is?”
He laughed. Unlocked the car doors with a beep of his smart key.
“But anyway,” Roseanna said, “you got the math wrong.”
“Right. The new baby. Four.”
“Still wrong.”
“Three and a half? Two and three-quarters?”
“Not even close.”
“Okay, fine,” he said, squinting into the sun and sheltering his eyes with one hand. “You tell me.”
“Zero. Zero squatters. Everybody left is family.”
He dropped his hand and nodded for one thoughtful moment.
“I guess that was a kind of math only you could do. So, look. The thing about the noise. How much you hate it. I’ve been watching you. And I think that might not be true anymore. You still say that. But I’m not sure I think you still mean it.”
Roseanna stared into his face for a moment. He demurred and looked down at the road.
“We don’t pay you to think, Max,” she said in her best Roseanna-from-the-olden-days voice.
Then she turned back toward home, following all that construction din straight into the heart of ever-present chaos.
She glanced briefly over her shoulder before opening the gate. Evan Maxwell stood still, as if lost in thought. On his face was a crooked but distinct smile.
HEAVEN ADJACENT BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
Roseanna is a high-powered attorney living a successful life in the city. When faced with a moment of crisis, she drives off and leaves everything behind. Do you think this was a rash decision or something that had been brewing for a long time?
Why does the inciting incident of Alice’s untimely death affect Roseanna so deeply in ways other life experiences she had encountered had not?
No sooner does Roseanna think she has found peace and quiet away from everything and everyone than she discovers people squatting on her new property. As time goes on more uninvited guests appear and ask to stay. This also includes a lost and aging horse. Even though she protests their presence, Roseanna allows them to stay. In what ways did her relationship with these tenants transform over the course of the book?
Roseanna has an estranged relationship with her son, Lance. When he shows up looking for her following her disappearance, it creates both conflict and opportunity in their relationship.
How does their mother-son bond grow and shift over the course of the book?
One of the memories Lance brings up to his mother is how he’d always wanted a dog as a child. How did the author use this unresolved desire to bring their relationship closer? Why do you think her son ultimately decides to stay for a while?
Inspired by the little girl living on her property, Roseanna creates an “iron zoo,” which attracts a lot of attention from the town and eventually a reporter. Discuss ways these sculptures end up touching and inspiring others. Do you think they helped Roseanna as well?
After Roseanna walks out on her business partner, Jerry, he files an expensive and emotionally draining lawsuit against her. Because of her choice to leave the past behind, Roseanna faces the possibility of losing almost everything she has left. Do you agree with her son’s intervention into the matter, and the ultimate outcome?
At one point the reporter from the New York Times who first revealed Roseanna’s location returns to see how she’s doing. He reminds her, “You told me you hadn’t lost anything you couldn’t afford to lose.” What do you think Roseanna meant when she said those words?
For the sculpture of Alice, which Roseanna called “a real sculpture” sculpted from metal, why do you think Roseanna chose to portray Alice paddling in a canoe?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2017 Laurel Renz
Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of thirty-three published books. Her bestselling 1999 novel, Pay It Forward, adapted into a major Warner Bros. motion picture, made the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults list and was translated into more than two dozen languages for distribution in more than thirty countries. Her novels Becoming Chloe and Jumpstart the World were included on the ALA’s Rainbow List; Jumpstart the World was also a finalist for two Lambda Literary Awards and won Rainbow Awards in two categories. The Language of Hoofbeats won a Rainbow Award. More than fifty of her short stories have been published in many journals, including the Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and the Sun, and in the anthologies Santa Barbara Stories and California Shorts, as well as the bestselling anthology Dog Is My Co-Pilot. Her short fiction received honorable mention in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, a second-place win for the Tobias Wolff Award, and nominations for Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Three have also been cited in Best American Short Stories.
Hyde is the founder and former president of the Pay It Forward Foundation. As a professional public speaker, she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University, met with AmeriCorps members at the White House, and shared a dais with Bill Clinton. An avid equestrian, photographer, and traveler, she lives in California.
Heaven Adjacent Page 28
